Prof.    John  S.    Tatlock 


-Btsfjop 


lectures,  1881 


STUDIES 


ENGLISH  REFORMATION 


J.    WILLIAMS,    D.D. 

F     BISHOP   OF  CONNECTICUT 


NEW   YORK 
E.    P.    BUTTON    &    COMPANY 

713  BROADWAY 

1881 


W5 


Copyright,  1881, 
BY  E.  P.  DUTTON  &  CO. 


^v:^py^ 

/"•:/':/       C/ 


Press  of 

y.  y.  Little  <&*  Co.t 
10  Astor  Place,  N.  Y. 


&•  Johnland 

Stereotype  Foundry, 

Suffolk  Co.t  N.  Y. 


THE  BISHOP  PADDOCK  LECTURES. 


IN  the  summer  of  the  year  1880,  GEORGE  A.  JARVIS 
of  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.,  moved  by  his  sense  of  the  great 
good  which  might  thereby  accrue  to  the  cause  of  CHRIST 
and  to  the  Church,  of  which  he  was  an  ever  grateful 
member,  gave  to  the  General  Theological  Seminary  of 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  certain  securities  ex- 
ceeding in  value  eleven  thousand  dollars  for  the  founda- 
tion and  maintenance  of  a  Lectureship  in  said  Seminary. 

Out  of  love  to  a  former  Pastor  and  enduring  friend, 
the  Rt.  Rev.  Benjamin  Henry  Paddock,  D.D.,  Bishop  of 
Massachusetts,  he  named  his  Foundation  "  THE  BISHOP 
PADDOCK  LECTURESHIP." 

The  deed  of  trust  declares  that: 

* '  The  subjects  of  the  Lectures  shall  be  such  as  appertain  to  the 
defence  of  the  religion  of  JESUS  CHRIST,  as  revealed  in  the  Holy 
Bible  and  illustrated  in  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  against  the 
varying  errors  of  the  day,  whether  materialistic,  rationalistic,  or 
professedly  religious,  and  also  to  its  defence  and  confirmation  in 
respect  of  such  central  truths  as  the  Trinity,  the  Atonement, 
Justification  and  the  Inspiration  of  the  Word  of  God  and  of 
such  central  facts  as  the  Church's  Divine  Order  and  Sacraments, 
her  historical  Reformation  and  her  rights  and  powers  as  a  pure 
and  National  Church.  And  other  subjects  may  be  chosen  if 
unanimously  approved  by  the  Board  of  Appointment  as  being 
both  timely  and  also  within  the  true  intent  of  this  Lectureship." 


M301GQO 


iv  The  Bishop  Paddock  Lectures. 

Under  the  appointment  of  the  Board  created  by  the 
Trust,  viz.,  the  Dean  of  the  General  Theological  Semi- 
nary and  the  Bishops  respectively  of  Massachusetts, 
Connecticut,  and  Long  Island,  the  Rt.  Rev.  John  Wil- 
liams, D.D.,  LL.D.,  Bishop  of  Connecticut,  delivered 
the  Lectures  for  the  year  1881  contained  in  this  volume. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 


THERE  are  some  things  which  I  very  much  desire 
to  say  in  the  way  of  preface  to  the  following  lectures. 

I  owe  it  to  myself  to  state  that  the  request  from 
the  Founder  of  the  Lectureship  that  I  would  be  the 
first  lecturer,  and  adding  the  subject  which  he  wished 
me  to  take  up,  came  to  me  before  I  was,  by  the 
terms  of  the  deed  of  endowment,  appointed  on,e  of 
those  trustees  empowered  to  select  a  lecturer.  I  was 
not  concerned  in  the  act  of  election. 

Secondly,  I  must  beg  to  remind  any  readers  I  may 
have,  that  to  one  writing  in  this  country  on  the  Eng- 
lish Reformation  original  documents  are  inaccessible. 
All  one  can  do  is  to  use  all  care  and  diligence  to 
obtain  information  from  sources  worthy  of  trust;  to 
"verify  references"  as  far  as  possible;  and  to  take 
nothing  on  any  one's  unverified  assertion.  This  course 
is,  no  doubt,  a  humbling  one,  in  that  it  shuts  him 
who  adopts  it  up  to  a  narrow  path  and  leaves  little 


vi  Prefatory  Note. 

room  for  imagination,  and  still  less  for  originality. 
But  it  is  the  only  honest  course  notwithstanding  its 
lowliness.  I  have  referred,  as  far  as  possible,,  to  books 
accessible  to  students  of  theology. 

Thirdly,  the  lectures,  printed  here  as  five,  were  by 
stress  of  time  and  place  delivered  as  four.  A  good 
deal  therefore  which  now  appears  was  omitted  in  the 
delivery. 

Lastly,  lectures  must,  unavoidably,  contain  repeti- 
tions of  facts  if  not  of  arguments  which  would,  under 
other  circumstances  be  inadmissible.  I  have  tried,  as 
far  as  possible,  to  avoid  them. 

J.  W. 
April,  1881. 


CONTENTS. 


LECTURE   I. 

PAGE 

The  General  Call  for  Reformation — Its  Causes  and  possible 

Methods 9 

LECTURE    II. 

Evils  to  be  reformed — Agents — Principle  acted  on— Sources 

of  Information;  and  alleged  Variations 41 

LECTURE    III. 
Abolition  of  Papal  Jurisdiction  in  England 79 

LECTURE    IV. 
Royal  Supremacy 125 

LECTURE   V. 
Doctrine 175 


LECTURE   I. 

THE  GENERAL   CALL  FOR  REFORMATION- 
ITS  CAUSES  AND  POSSIBLE  METHODS. 


STUDIES    ON    THE    ENGLISH 
REFORMATION. 


LECTURE   I. 

THE   GENERAL   CALL  FOR  REFORMATION— ITS 
CAUSES  AND  POSSIBLE  METHODS. 

T  CANNOT  begin  the  first  course  of  lectures 
on  the  excellent  foundation  established  by 
one  whose  good  deeds  to  the  Church  have  been 
manifold,  without  at  least  a  few  words  of  thank- 
fulness and  congratulation.  Such  foundations 
as  this  have  been  a  real,  and,  among  those 
who  think  of  such  matters  at  all,  a  deeply 
felt  need  in  our  Church,  especially  in  her  in- 
stitutions for  theological  training.  The  double 
purpose  which  they  serve,  first  of  inducing  stu- 
dents to  give  themselves,  diligently  and  care- 
fully, to  special  lines  of  investigation,  and, 
next,  of  enabling  them  to  give,  to  the  best 
of  their  abilities,  the  results  of  such  special 
studies  to  those  who  may  be  aided  by  them, 
can  scarcely  be  overvalued.  While,  therefore, 


12  The  English  Reformation. 

both  personally  and  officially,  I  venture  to  ex- 
press my  thankfulness  to  the  founder  of  this 
Lecture,  I  cannot  but  congratulate  the  ven- 
erable Institution  with  which  it  is  connected, 
on  the  possession  of  an  instrumentality  which 
may  be  made  so  available  to  the  best  interests 
of  careful  study  in  Divinity. 

The  subject  which  was  assigned  to  me,  when 
I  was  honored  with  the  appointment  that  brings 
me  here,  was  the  ENGLISH  REFORMATION.  I 
have  not  supposed  that  it  thus  became  my  duty 
to  attempt  to  present  to  you  a  chronologically 
arranged  sketch  of  the  history  of  the  period 
which  those  two  words  cover.  It  has  seemed 
to  me,  that  the  end  intended  could  be  better 
reached  by  some  examination  of  the  underly- 
ing principles  which,  with  whatever  obscura- 
tions, from  time  to  time  in  individual  minds, 
or  even  in  the  minds  of  bodies  of  men,  really 
shaped  the  work;  by  endeavoring  to  point  out 
the  lines  and  methods  on  and  by  which  results 
were  attained;  by  exhibiting  the  character  of 
some  of  those  results;  by  attempting  to  dis- 
criminate between  things  that  really  belong 


The  English  Reformation.  13 

to  the  work  of  reform  and  those  that  do  not, 
and  to  relegate  the  latter  to  their  proper  place; 
in  a  word,  by  a  selection  of  topics  rather  than 
a  mere  consecutive  narration  of  events.  And 
now,  without  further  preface,  let  me  address 
myself  to  my  work. 

A  question  that  meets  us  at  the  very  outset 
of  our  inquiries  is  this:  What  proof  is  there  of 
any  wide-spread  conviction,  at  the  beginning 
of  the  sixteenth  century  and  earlier,  that  a 
reformation  was  necessary  ?  It  is  said,  the  mere 
sudden  outbreak  of  an  individual  here  or  there, 
the  mere  sudden  movement  of  even  a  number 
of  persons  cannot  afford  sufficient  evidence  of 
such  a  pervading  conviction.  Such  outbreaks 
and  such  movements  are  not  of  infrequent  oc- 
currence in  the  world's  history.  You  can  no 
more  judge  of  the  intellectual  and  moral  at- 
mosphere of  a  period  by  them,  than  you  can 
judge  of  the  atmospheric  conditions  of  a  vast 
country  by  the  storms  or  tornadoes  of  isolated 
districts.  A  passing  tumult  on  the  surface  of 
the  ocean  is  not  its  groundswell.  Without 
stopping  to  consider  the  limitations  or  modi- 


T4  The  English  Reformation. 

fications  with  which  these  statements  are  to  be 
accepted,  it  may  still  be  doubted  whether  the 
question  which  gives  rise  to  them  has  always 
received  the  attention  it  deserves.  I  believe 
that  its  consideration  is  a  condition  precedent 
to  the  intelligent  study  of  any  and  all  methods 
of  reformation  adopted  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

It  is  fortunate  that  history  gives  a  direct  and 
unmistakable  answer  to  this  question.  The 
very  abundance  of  material  is,  indeed,  a  source 
of  embarrassment.  To  collect  it  would  be  to 
compile  volumes.  To  select  from  it  is  not 
an  easy  task.  The  testimony  comes  from  "all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men;"  from  the  loftiest 
as  well  as  the  lowliest  in  ecclesiastical  place 
and  station.  Time  and"  space  forbid  me  to 
do  more  than  to  call  your  attention  to  the 
long  list  of  names — not  of  querulous  and  dis- 
contented doctrinaires,  but — of  men  of  mark^ 
and  acknowledged  power,  who,  for  centuries 
preceding  the  sixteenth,  demand,  in  tones  that 
cannot  be  mistaken,  the  reformation  of  the 
Church. 

As  far  back  as  the  twelfth  century,  St  Ber- 


The  English   Reformation.  15 

nard  —  called  the  last  of  the  Fathers  —  said, 
"  Who  will  grant  me  to  see,  before  I  die, 
the  Church  of  God  as  it  was  in  the  ancient 
days  ? " 1  And  this  cry  had  gathered  strength 
and  emphasis  in  the  centuries  that  follo'wed. 
It  was  heard  in  1409,  at  Pisa,  with  its  pledge, 
alas  !  unfulfilled,  of  purification  in  "  Head  and 
members;"  at  Constance,  in  1414,  in  sermons 
than  which  no  utterances  can  be  more  distinct, 
in  Gerson's  catalogue  of  abuses,  and  in  what 
we  should  call  a  Committee  on  Reformation, 
though  it  was  then  termed  a  "  Reformation 
College;"  at  Basle,  in  1431,  when  propositions 
for  a  reformation  of  the  Church  were  submitted 
to  the  then  Pontiff  by  Henry  VI.,  King  of 
England. 

If  we  turn  from  Councils  to  individual  di- 
vines, we  are  confronted  with  a  long  list  of 
illustrious  names.  I  will  only,  however,  recall 
to  you  those  of  Gerson,  the  preachers  at  Con- 
stance, Contarini,  Sadolet  and  other  members 
of  what  was  known  as  the  "Oratory  of  Divine 
Love,"  on  the  continent  of  Europe;  and  of 

1  "Ep.  ad  Eugen."  ccxxxviii.  6. 


1 6  The  English  Reformation. 

Grostete,2  Bradwardine,  Fitzalph  and  Colet 
in  England.  If  I  do  not  mention  Jerome  of 
Prague,  John  Huss,  Wickliffe  and  others,  it  is 
only  because  I  would  name  none  to  whose 
testimony  those  who  deny  any  necessity  of  a 
reformation  can,  on  any  ground,  object.  If  to 
those  we  add  the  numerous  names  of  theolo- 
gians and  other  scholars  that  come  to  the 
notice  of  one  studying  the  history  of  the  three 
centuries  preceding  the  Reformation,  we  have 
an  array  of  testimony  that  is  simply  over- 
whelming.3 Bossuet  attempts — and  others  have 
followed  him — to  break  the  force  of  this  tes- 
timony by  asserting  that  the  conclusion  drawn 
from  it  "is  a  manifest  deceit."  He  says,  "  not 
one  of  these  doctors  even  for  once  thought  of 
changing  the  faith  of  the  Church,  or  of  cor- 
recting her  worship,  which  chiefly  consisted  in 
the  sacrifice  of  the  altar,  or  of  subverting  the 
authority  of  her  prelates,  and  chiefly  that  of 
the  Pope."4 

2  See  his  tremendous  indictment  of  the  Roman  Court  in  Perry's 
"Life  of  Grostete,"  c.  x. 

3  Hardwick  on  the  Articles  c.  i.  sec.  i.       4  "  Variations,"  bk.  i.  2. 


The  English  Reformation.  17 

But  this,  however  specious  it  may  be,  is  the 
merest  perversion  of  the  truth.  Practical  evils 
in  the  Church  have,  as  a  rule,  their  roots  in 
doctrine.  How  could  the  shameful  sale  of 
indulgences  and  masses  have  been  reformed 
without  touching  doctrinal  teaching  concern- 
ing the  intermediate  state  ?  How  could  such 
a  scandal  as  the  offering  in  one  year  of  nearly 
a  thousand  pounds  at  the  altar  of  Thomas  a 
Becket  in  Canterbury  Cathedral,  when  during 
the  same  period  not  one  penny  was  offered  at 
the  altar  of  our. Lord — how  could  such  a  scan- 
dal have  been  abated,  and  yet  nothing  have 
been  said  as  to  saintly  intercession  and  invo- 
cation ?  I  adduce  but  two  instances,  where 
many  more  might  have  been  presented;  but 
these  two  are  enough  to  prove  that  the  words 
of  Bossuet  are  idle  words.  How  idle  they 
are,  the  very  action  of  the  Tridentine  Coun- 
cil shows,  where  it  was  agreed  "  that  Faith 
and  Discipline  should  be  treated  of  simulta- 
neously." 5 

s  Buckley's  "History  of  the  Council  of  Trent,"  part  ii.  c.  iv. 
Pallavicini,  "Hist.,"  etc.  lib.  vi.  c.  vii. 


1 8  The  English  Reformation. 

As  to  his  further  assertion  tha!t  there  was 
no  purpose  of  touching  the  papacy  and  its 
claims,  if  that  were  true  what  means  the 
pledge  at  Pisa  of  purification  in  the  Head 
and  members  of  the  Church  ?  What  mean 
the  words  of  Gerson,  the  great  chancellor 
of  the  University  of  Paris,  when  he  says, 
making  a  strange  distinction  between  the 
Catholic  and  the  Apostolic  Church,  that  of 
the  former  "  the  Pope  cannot  be  called  the 
head,  nor  ought  to  be  the  head,  but  only 
Christ's  vicar  provided,  nevertheless  that  the 
keys  err^not;  and  in  this  Church,  and  in  its 
faith,  every  man  may  be  saved,  although,  in 
all  the  world,  no  Pope  should  be  found "  ? 
Or  again,  when  he  says,  "  There  is  another 
called  the  Apostolic  Church,  particular  and 
private,  included  in  the  Catholic  Church,  com- 
posed of  the  Pope,  Cardinals,  Bishops,  Prel- 
ates, and  Ecclesiastics.  This  is  wont  to  be 
called  the  Roman  Church,  of  which  the  Pope 
is  believed  to  be  the  head;  but  the  other 
Ecclesiastics  are  included  in  it.  This  Church 
can  err,  can  deceive  and  be  deceived,  can 


The  English   Reformation. 


fall  into  schism  and  heresy,  can  cease  to 
be"?  Or,  once  more,  when  he  says,  "The 
Pope,  as  Pope  is  man,  and  as  man  so  is  he 
Pope,  and  as  Pope  he  can  sin,  and  as  man 
he  can  err  "  ?  6  The  way  in  which  so  great 
a  theologian  confounds  the  Ciiria  Romana 
with  the  Apostolic  Church,  sad  and  wretched 
as  it  is,  is  nothing  to  us  here:  but  who  can 
say,  in  the  face  of  such  declarations,  that  no 
reform  was  thought  of  which  would  have 
touched  the  papacy  ?  Let  me  add,  before  I 
leave  this  matter,  that  Gerson  in  1410  spoke 
no  more  strongly  than  Adrian  VI.  in  1522. 
These  are  his  words:  "I  say  first,  that  if  by 
the  Roman  Church  is  understood  its  head, 
that  is  the  Pontiff,  it  is  certain  that  he  can 
err,  even  in  matters  pertaining  to  Faith,  in 
asserting  heresy  by  determination  or  decretal. 
For  many  Roman  Pontiffs  have  been  here- 
tics."7 How  strangely  would  these  words  of 
Pope  and  Doctor  have  struck  on  the  ears 

6  See  the  passages,  quoted,  with  many  others  by  Gieseler,  Hist. 
vol.  iii.  p.  222.     Am.  Ed. 

7  See  Hardwick's  "Reformation,"  p.  349,  n.  5.     First  Ed. 


2O  The  English   Reformation. 

of  the  prelates  of  the  Vatican1  Council  of 
1870!  How  do  they  shew  what  "new  fash- 
ions in  religion "  pervade  the  Roman  Church 
to-day !  How  do  they  contradict  the  spe- 
cious words  of  Bossuet,  words  so  unworthy 
of  the  eagle  of  Meaux!  We  are  warranted, 
then,  in  saying  that  for  more  than  three  cen- 
turies before  the  Reformation  there  was  a  de- 
mand for  reform  in  the  Western  Church  so 
wide-spread  as  to  be  virtually  universal;  and 
that  the  demand  involved  not  merely  reform 
in  life  and  discipline,  but  in  doctrine,  in  wor- 
ship, and  in  the  constitution  of  the  Church 
with  and  under  the  papacy. 

Standing,  now,  on  this  unquestionable  fact, 
we  look  two  ways.  We  look  back,  and  ask 
for  the  causes  of  this  cry  for  reformation.  We 
look  forward,  and  inquire  for  the  methods  by 
which  its  attainment  was  attempted.  First, 
then,  let  us  look  at  the  causes,  and  next  at 
the  methods. 

And,  just  here,  in  speaking  of  causes,  let 
me  say  a  word  as  to  the  importance  in  his- 
torical studies  of  carefully  distinguishing  be- 


The  English   Reformation.  21 

tween  causes  and  occasions.  An  occasion 
furnishes  the  opportunity  for  action;  but  the 
causes  of  the  action  always  lie  further  back, 
and  did  they  not  exist  the  occasion  would 
pass  unheeded.  There  is  no  error  more  com- 
mon, none  more  disastrous  to  all  true  study 
of  history,  than  this  confusion  of  cause  and 
occasion.  As  it  will  be  necessary  to  recur 
to  it  again,  I  content  myself  with  this  bare 
statement  here. 

From  the  manifold  causes  which  wrought 
together  to  produce  the  demand  for  refor- 
mation, I  shall  select  three  —  I  believe  the 
three  most  energetic  and  far-reaching — for 
examination.  This  selection  must  not  be  re- 
garded as  exhaustive ;  I  trust  it  may  be 
suggestive. 

And  first,  as  to  the  papacy.  No  Roman 
Pontiff  ever  advanced  loftier  claims  than  did 
Boniface  VIII. ,  when,  in  1302,  he  addressed  to 
the  whole  Christian  world  the  Bull  Unam 
Sanctam;  which  (if  there  can  be  such  a  thing), 
is  a  cathedral  utterance  infallible  and  irreform- 
able.  Not  Gregory  VII.  nor  Innocent  III., 


22  The  English  Reformation. 

in  their  boldest  declarations,  ever  went  be- 
yond the  sweeping  assertions  of  that  astound- 
ing document.  If  words  have  any  meaning, 
it  teaches  the  subjection  of  all  temporal  power 
to  the  spiritual  as  concentrated  in  the  Pope; 
and  the  further  subjection  to  him  of  every 
human  being  on  pain  of  damnation.8 

The  two  centuries  that  followed  that  culmin- 
ating point  for  the  Papacy  witnessed  its  rapid 
and  sure  decline.  The  removal  to  Avignon 
took  from  it  the  prestige  of  the  eternal  city 
and  the  tomb  of  St.  Peter.  The  seventy  years' 
sojourn  in  that  luxurious  city  brought  more 
clearly  to  the  light  of  day  the  corruptions  and 
the  cruelties  of  the  papal  court,  and  exhibited 
the  Supreme  Pontiff  as  the  puppet  of  the  French 
king,  with  some  occasional  intervention  of  the 

8  See  the  bull  quoted  and  condensed  by  Fleury,  "Hist.  Eccl.," 
lib.  xc.  c.  xviii. ;  and  compare  his  attempted  explanations  with 
the  remarks  of  Archbishop  Kenrick,  in  his  "  Concio  habenda  at 
non  habita  in  Concilia  Vaticano"  This  last  is  printed  in  Prof. 
Friedrich's  "  Documenta  ad  illustrandum^  etc.,  I.  Abtheilung, 
p.  189.  A  good  translation  of  it  is  given  in  "An  Inside  View  of 
the  Vatican  Council."  See  also,  Hussey,  "Rise  of  the  Papal 
Power,"  p.  177. 


The  English  Reformation.  23 

German  emperor.  The  great  schism,  lasting  as 
it  did  through  forty  years,  gave  a  still  ruder 
shock  to  men's  reverence  for  the  papacy.  How 
indeed  could  it  retain  in  people's  eyes  the  di- 
vinity with  which  it  had  hedged  itself,  when 
the  scandalous  spectacle  of  rival  claimants 
(numbering  at  one  time  three)  to  the  royal- 
ties and  privileges  of  Peter,  was  patent  to  the 
world,  while  different  sovereigns  and  nations 
attached  themselves  to  the  different  claim- 
ants ?  Just  at  this  moment,  too,  the  nations 
of  modern  Europe  were  consolidating  and  set- 
tling their  national  life;  so  that  this  state  of 
things  "  could  not  fail  to  give  an  impulse, 
hitherto  unknown  in  calling  up  the  nation- 
ality of  many  a  western  state,  in  satisfying 
it  that  the  papal  rule  was  not  essential  to 
its  welfare,  and  in  thereby  adding  strength 
to  local  jurisdictions."  9  How  strong  this  im- 
pulse was  may  be  seen  in  the  fact  that  at 
the  Council  of  Constance  (1417),  the  vote 
was  not  taken  by  individuals  but  by  nations, 
namely  the  English,  German,  French,  and 

9  Hard  wick. 


24  The  English  Reformation. 

Italian.  That  method  of  voting  was  the  pre- 
cursor of  national  reformations.  To  this  must 
be  added  the  personal  character  of  many  of 
the  popes  themselves.10  In  this  rapid  sketch 
I  cannot  undertake  to  name  them,  nor  is  it 
needful.  To  one  who  has  waded  through  the 
details  of  vileness,  the  allusion  is  enough.  To 
one  who  has  not,  the  statement  of  the  fact 
may  well  suffice.  The  result  was  that,  for  a 
far  longer  period  before  the  actual  reforma- 
tion than  we  are  apt  to  think,  the  illusions 
that  begirt  the  papacy  were  disappearing,  its 
pretensions  were  questioned  and  sometimes 
despised,  and  its  powers  were  limited  and 
checked. 

It  is  obvious  to  name,  as  a  second  cause  of 
the  demand  for  reformation,  the  revival  of  let- 
ters and  the  impulse  given  by  it  to  human  in- 
tellect. There  are,  however,  certain  aspects 
of  this  subject  which,  common-place  as  the 

10  Mr.  Blunt  says,  "For  sixty  years  before  the  final  breach 
was  made,  there  had  not  been  a  pope,  except  Clement  VII., 
who  could  be  called  even  a  decent  Christian"  He  gives,  also, 
details,  "Reformation,"  p.  242. 


The  English  Reformation.  25 

subject  itself  may  seem,   are   worth   noticing 
somewhat  in  detail. 

The  revival  of  learning  in  Italy,  "and  at 
that  time  Italy  clearly  led  in  everything,"  was 
in  its  temper  and  spirit  simply  pagan.  Turn  to 
the  Decameron  of  Boccacio,  "saturated  from 
top  to  toe  with  the  pagan  spirit."  Listen  to 
an  eclogue  of  Geraldini  on  the  Passion,  in 
which  "our  Blessed  Lord  is  spoken  of  under 
the  name  of  Daphnis;  and  'Daphnis  in  an 
odoriferous  garden/  is  the  commencement  of 
the  Agony  in  Gethsemane;"  while  «the  Jews 
are  made  to  cry  out  to  Pilate,  "  Release  Ba- 
rabbas  and  crucify  Daphnis."  Go  to  the  court 
of  the  Medici,  where  you  find  adopted  "  not 
merely  the  externals  of  the  old  existence,  but 
the  elements,  that  is  preoccupation  with  the 
present  life,  forgetfulness  of  the  future,  the 
appeal  to  the  senses,  the  renunciation  of 
Christianity."  Remember  that  in  Rome,  in 
the  time  of  Leo  X.,  "it  was  a  characteristic 
of  good  society  to  dispute  the  fundamental 
principles  of  Christianity;"  that  "at  court  they 
spoke  of  the  institutions  of  the  Catholic  Church, 


26  The  English  Reformation. 

- j 

of  passages  of  Holy  Scripture,  only  in  a  tone  of 
jesting,  and  that  the  mysteries  of  the  Faith 
were  held  in  derision."  Hear  what  Pallavicini, 
Rome's  chosen  defender  of  the  Council  of  Trent, 
says  of  this  same  Pontiff,  who  has  sometimes 
been  thought  to  have  been  a  veritable  pagan. 
"  Scarcely  had  he  issued  from  his  infancy  when 
he  was  admitted  to  the  supreme  senate  of  the 
Church,  and  he  failed,  thenceforth,  in  his  duty, 
by  neglecting  the  noblest  line  of  knowledge, 
and  the  one  most  in  accord  with  his  profession. 
He  failexjL  much  more,  when,  becoming  chief 
of  the  Church,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven  years, 
he  not  only  continued  to  devote  himself  to 
curious  researches  in  profane  studies,  but  made 
the  very  palace  of  religion  a  rendezvous  for 
men  familiar  with  Greek  fables  and  the  charms 
of  poesy.  .  .  .  He  left  the  Church  what  he  found 
it,  that  is  to  say  almost  destitute  of  great  men, 
who,  as  the  world  came  forth  from  so  many 
centuries  of  barbarism,  might  have  caused  a 
revival  of  sacred  erudition,  as  well  as  of  that 
profane  learning  which  was  rising  into  life  in 
every  quarter."  Well  may  Dr.  Neale  exclaim, 


The  English  Reformation.  27 

"  Marvellous  was  the  infatuation  which  could 
expend  all  its  zeal  and  energies  in  the  discov- 
ery of  lost  books  of  Tacitus  or  Livy,  in  the 
production  of  the  purest  Ciceronian  Latin,  in 
the  erection  of  classical  churches,  and  which 
could  pay  for  all  these  pagan  amusements  and 
studies  by  the  infamous  mission  of  Tetzel,  un- 
conscious of  the  approaching  earthquake,  re- 
garding the  discontent  of  one  German  monk 
as  something  that  might — it  mattered  not 
whether  of  the  two — be  hushed  at  the  stake 
or  silenced  by  the  sop  of  a  fat  benefice." 

No  wonder  that  even  in  Italy  itself  a  reac- 
tion came;  that  good  and  thoughtful  men  tried 
"  to  stay  the  general  corruption  of  the  Church 
by  the  revived  force  of  religious  conviction." 
Honest  as  such  attempts  were,  and  hearty  as 
should  be  the  admiration  they  evoke,  they 
failed,  mainly  for  two  reasons.  The  first  is 
expressed  in  a  saying  attributed  to  Reginald 
Pole:  "That  men  should  content  themselves 
with  their  own  inward  convictions,  without  con- 
cerning themselves  to  know  if  errors  and  abuses 
existed  in  the  Church."  The  second  is  found 


28  The  English  Reformation. 

I 

• — using  the  word  in  a  very  different  sense  from 
that  now  given  to  it — in  the  irreformable  char- 
acter of  the  Roman  Court  and  its  influence  on 
the  Church.  Meantime,  it  is  easy  to  see  how, 
wholly  aside  from  mere  intellectual  impulse, 
this  outbreak  of  paganism  at  the  very  centre 
of  civilization  must  tend  to  produce  a  reaction, 
and  help  to  swell  the  cry  for  reformation. 

I  ought  not  to  dismiss  this  topic  without  at 
least  a  passing  reference  to  the  fact  that  this 
pagan  tendency  was  always  kept  in  check  in 
England.  Be  the  causes  of  this  what  they 
may — and  they  cannot  be  considered  here—- 
the fact  is  indisputable.  Be  it  true,  that  "the 
marks  not  only  of  Italy,  but  of  Boccacio,  are 
stamped  upon  English  letters  from  Chaucer 
onward,"  it  is  equally  true  that  those  marks 
are  only  on  the  surface;  that  they  present  the 
externals  of  the  old  existence  but  not  its  inner 
elements.  Chaucer,  Shakspeare,  Spenser,  and 
Surrey  may  have  sought  their  models  and  ma- 
terials in  the  pagan  renaissance,  but  they  never 
imbibed  its  moral  foulness,  the  frivolity  of  its 
carpe  diem,  or  its  scornful  unbelief.  John  Colet, 


The  English  Reformation.  29 

the  memorable  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  studied  Greek 
in  Italy  and  came  back  to  lecture  on  St.  Paul's 
Epistles  at  Oxford,  in  I498.1 

The  third  cause  of  the  cry  for  a  reformation, 
which  I  propose  to  notice,  is  one  that  touches 
depths  in  human  character  and  life  which  the 
two  just  considered  do  not  reach.  It  brings 
before  us  that  ultimate  and  divinely  ordered 
responsibility  which  rests  on  the  reason  and 
conscience  of  individuals  in  reference  to  their 
belief;  and  that  necessity,  which  equally  at- 
taches to  individuals,  of  personal  faith  in,  and 
personal  communion  with  our  Lord.  The  other 
causes  of  which  I  have  spoken  live  in  the  world 
and  share  in  its  movement  and  life;  this  dwells 
apart  in  the  retirement  of  each  man's  soul. 

It  has  often  been  observed  that  while  the 
subtle  mind  of  the  East  gave  itself  to  the  study 

1  Not  to  burden  the  page  with  too  many  references,  I  may  still 
mention,  Pallavicini,  "Hist,  of  Council  of  Trent,"  lib.  i.  c.  2.; 
Ranke,  "  Hist,  of  the  Popes,"  book  i.  c.  2. ;  and  book  ii. ;  Taine's, 
"Eng.  Literature,"  book  ii.  c.  i.  iv.;  Neale,  "Essays  on  Litur- 
giology,"  xiv.;  Mr.  Gladstone,  "Study  on  the  Reformation," 
Contemp.  Rev.  Oct.  1878;  Knight,  "Life  of  Colet." 


30  The  English  Reformation. 

1 

of  Theology  in  its  strict  signification,  the  more 
practical  mind  of  the  West  turned  itself  to 
Anthropology.  "The  East,"  says  Freeman, 
"loves  rather  to  meditate  on  God  as  He  is, 
and  on  the  facts  of  Christian  doctrine  as  they- 
stand  in  the  Creed;  the  West  contemplates 
more  practically  the  great  phenomena  of 
Christian  psychology,  and  the  relations  of 
man  to  God.  The  East  has  had  its  Athan- 
asius  and  its  Andrew  of  Crete;  the  West  its 
Augustine  and  Leo." 2 

Then,  besides,  it  is  equally  true  that  "Chris- 
tian Anthropology  ranges  itself  under  two 
heads — objective  and  subjective.  By  the  for- 
mer is  meant  the  sacraments  and  ordinances 
of  the  Church,  as  such;  by  the  latter,  the 
progress  of  grace  in  the  heart  of  each  one 
of  us."3 

Now  it  was  mainly,  or  at  least  very  largely, 
with  the  former  of  these  heads,  the  objective 
view  of  Christian  anthropology,  that  the  med- 
iaeval divines  concerned  themselves.  I  do  not 

2  Freeman's  "Principles  of  Divine  Service, "  vol.  i.  p.  274. 
s  Ffoulkes,  "Christendom's  Divisions,"  §  40. 


The  English  Reformation.  31 

forget  that  from  time  to  time  voices  were 
heard  inculcating  personal  earnestness  in  the 
religious  life;  least  of  all  would  I  forget  that 
noble  band  of  mystical  divines,  the  "  Friends 
of  God,"  as  they  were  called,  the  precursors 
of  the  Reformation,  whose  mention  brings 
back  to  our  memories  the  names  of  Tauler, 
and  Ruysbroek,  and  Wessel;  nor  yet  do  I 
forget,  later  on,  that  "  Oratory  of  Divine 
Love,"  which  presents  to  us  the  names  of 
Contarini,  and  Sadolet,  and  Pole. 

Still  it  remains  true  that  the  objective  side 
of  Anthropology,  that  which  concerns  itself 
with  the  objective  grace  of  the  Sacraments, 
and,  therefore,  deals  especially  with  man's 
corporate  life  as  a  member  of  the  Church 
of  God,  was  the  side  which  engaged  the 
thoughts  of  the  mediaeval  divines  of  the  West- 
ern Church. 

It  is  easy  to  see  how  this  view  might  as- 
sume proportions  which  would  obscure,  if  it 
did  not  displace,  the  recognition  of  the  indi- 
vidual duty  and  the  individual  life.  More  es- 
pecially would  this  danger  affect  the  popular 


32  The  English  Reformation. 

idea  and  estimate  of  religion.  The  well  in- 
structed, the  studious,  the  thoughtful  might, 
and  in  many  cases  did,  escape  it.  But  with 
the  body  of  the  people  such  escape  was  an 
impossibility.  Corporate  membership  in  the 
Church  as  all  in  all,  an  exaggerated  idea  of 
the  value  of  a  perfunctory  discharge  of  rou- 
tine and  merely  external  duties,  "  the  form 
of  godliness  without  the  power,"  must  inevi- 
tably have  been  the  outcome  of  all  this.  And 
this  as  much  as,  perhaps  more  than,  anything 
else  honeycombed  the  Church  with  corruption, 
and  brought  the  social  state  of  Europe  to  rot- 
tenness. Possibly  nothing  short  of  a  passion- 
ate reclamation  against  such  an  overslaughing 
of  personal  religion  and  individual  responsi- 
bUity,  so  passionate  that  it  disturbed  the 
balance  between  the  two  sides  of  Christian 
Anthropology  in  an  opposite  direction  from 
the  one  just  indicated,  could  have  roused  the 
hearts  and  consciences  of  men.  And  such 
a  reclamation  was  the  real  work  of  Luther. 
Such  a  reclamation  was  not  wanting  in  Eng- 
land. 


The  English  Reformation.  33 

Such,  then,  being  the  need  of  reform  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  such  the  cry — long  con- 
tinued— for  it,  we  are  next  to  consider  the  meth- 
ods by  which  reform  could  be  accomplished. 

The  most  obvious  method,  the  one  which 
would  immediately  occur  to  men's  minds  in 
those  days,  would  be  the  convoking  of  a  Gen- 
eral Council  of  Western  Christendom.  At- 
tempts in  this  direction  had  been  made  during 
the  previous  century,  but  they  had  accom- 
plished nothing.  The  Councils  of  Pisa,  Con- 
stance and  Basle — as  has  been  already  said — 
were  all  summoned  in  the  interests  of  reform; 
they  had  met,  discussed,  and  separated,  without 
appreciable  result.  It  is  perfectly  true  that 
plans  for  " constitutional  reform"  found  ut- 
terance at  Constance  and  Basle;  but  it  is 
equally  true  that  these  plans  were  perpetually 
thwarted  and  brought  to  nought  by  papal 
violence  or  intrigue;  and  it  is  not  to  be  for- 
gotten that,  in  1460,  Pius  II.  forbade  any  at- 
tempt "to  invoke  the  aid  of  councils  under  pain 
of  damnation."  All  avenues  of  hope  in  that 
direction  might  well  seem  to  be  forever  closed. 


34  The  English  Reformation. 

Still  men  did  hope,  even  against!  hope.  Con- 
stitutional reform  had  taken  strong  hold  in 
France,  and  vitalized,  though  it  did  not  origi- 
nate, the  principles  that  underlaid  the  Gallican 
liberties.  The  accession  of  Pius  III.  to  the 
pontifical  throne,  in  1503,  gave  a  gleam  of  hope 
that  something  might  yet  be  accomplished  un- 
der the  leadership  of  the  Pope  and  the  hier- 
archy. But  that  gleam  expired  when,  after  a 
reign  of  six  and  twenty  days,  he  died.  Then 
when  the  paganizing  Leo  X.  was  succeeded  by 
the  " reforming  pontiff,"  Adrian  VI.,  men  hoped 
again.  And  surely  when  Adrian  boldly  as- 
serted that  "many  abominations  had  existed 
for  a  long  time,  even  in  the  holy  see,  yea, 
that  all  things  had  been  grievously  altered 
and  perverted,"  there  might  well  seem  to  be 
ground  for  hope.  Be  that  as  it  may,  Adrian's 
brief  pontificate — reforming  popes  seem  to 
have  had  short  reigns — aroused  men's  hopes 
only  to  dash  them  down  when  it  ended;  and 
"  the  Roman  Curia  persisting  in  its  resolu- 
tion to  discountenance  all  change  whatever, 
manifested  no  activity,  till  its  slum- 


The  English  Reformation.  35 

bers  were  broken  by  the  prospect  of  a  general 
revolt."  * 

Since,  then,  the  papacy  would  neither  in- 
stitute measures  of  reform  nor  allow  them  to 
be  instituted,  was  all  thought  of  reformation 
to  be  abandoned,  and  the  Western  Church 
to  settle  down  into  a  unity  of  death  ?  That 
could  not  be.  The  needs  were  too  profound, 
the  stirrings  of  men's  hearts  were  too  thorough, 
the  cry  was  too  universal,  to  come  to  such  an 
end.  The  haunting  spectre,  which  the  pontiffs 
tried  to  persuade  themselves  was  but  a  "  hor- 
rible shadow  and  unreal  mockery,"  would  not 
down. 

Two — and  only  two — methods  of  reform  re- 
mained after  the  failures  of  which  I  have  been 
speaking.  The  first  of  these  was  a  movement, 
or  movements,  under  the  conduct  of  individ- 
ual leaders.  The  other  was  based  upon  a 
recognition  of  the  rights  of  autonomous  na- 
tional churches;  on  "  the  principle  of  nation- 
ality as  opposed  to  papal  universalism";  and 
took  its  form  accordingly.  The  former  of 
4  See  Hardwick's  "Reformation,"  Introduction. 


36  The  English  Reformation. 

these  methods  shaped  the  Reformation  in  Ger- 
many and  Switzerland,  giving  to  each  the 
name  of  its  especial  leader ;  the  latter  was 
pursued  in  England,  and  kept  our  Anglican 
Reformation  from  bearing  the  impress  or  the 
name  of  any  single  master.  And  this  national 
idea  had,  a  century  earlier,  been  recognized, 
as  I  have  already  said,  at  the  Council  of  Con- 
stance; where  the  "four  nations,"  Italian,  Ger- 
man, French,  and  English  were  held  to  pos- 
sess equal  rights,  and  no  subject  could  be 
acted  on  by  the  Council  till  it  had  been 
accepted  by  a  majority  of  the  "  nations." 
The  great  John  Gerson,  also,  had  asserted 
the  same  principle,  saying  that  "  The  Church 
may  be  reformed  by  parts:  that  this  is  neces- 
sary; and  that  it  may  be  accomplished  by 
provincial  councils."  Nor  was  this  an  after- 
thought of  that  time,  or  of  times  that  fol- 
lowed. It  was  a  recurrence  to  the  practice 
of  the  "purest  ages  of  the  faith."  In  all 
time  and  everywhere  national  synods  had  dis- 
cussed and  dealt  with  the  heresies,  errors, 
and  evils  of  national  churches,  whether  such 


The  English  Reformation.  37 

heresies,  errors,  and  evils  had  grown  up  from 
within,  or  been  thrust  in  from  without.  The 
method  was  an  old  one  revived,  not  a  new 
one  invented.5 

Let  me  sum  up  these  thoughts  concerning 
methods  of  reform,  in  the  wise  and  weighty 
words  of  Archbishop  Laud:  "It  is  true,  a 
general  council  free  and  entire,  would  have 
been  the  best  remedy  and  most  able  for  a 
gangrene  that  had  spread  so  far  and  eaten  so 
deep  into  Christianity.  But,  what !  should  we 
have  suffered  this  gangrene  to  endanger  life 
and  all,  rather  than  be  cured  in  time  by  a 
physician  of  a  weaker  knowledge  and  a  less 
able  hand  ?  We  live  to  see  since,  if  we  had 
stayed  and  expected  a  general  council,  what 
manner  of  one  we  should  have  had,  if  any;  for 
that  at  Trent  was  neither  general  nor  free;6 
and  for  the  errors  Rome  had  contracted,  it 

5  Hard  wick  "On  the  Articles,''  chap.  i.  sec.  2.  Laud  against 
Fisher  (Oxf.  1839),  PP-  122-129. 

e  Compare  Bp.  Bull's  words,  "  Tridentina  conventio  quidvis 
potius  quam  generate  concilium  dicenda  sit." — "Defens.  Fid. 
Nic.  Proemium,"  §  8. 


38  The  English  Reformation. 

confirmed  them,  it  cured  them  riot.  And  yet 
I  much  doubt  whether  even  that  council  (such 
as  it  was)  would  have  been  called,  if  some 
provincial  and  national  synods,  under  supreme 
regal  power,  had  not  first  set  upon  this  great 
work  of  reformation;  which  I  heartily  wish  had 
been  as  orderly  and  happily  pursued  as  the 
work  was  right  Christian  and  good  in  itself." 

"I  make  no  doubt  but  that,  as  the  universal 
Catholic  Church  would  have  reformed  herself, 
had  she  been  in  all  parts  freed  of  the  Roman 
yoke,  so,  while  she  was  for  the  most  in  those 
western  parts  under  that  yoke,  the  Church  of 
Rome  was,  if  not  the  only,  yet  the  chief  hin- 
drance of  reformation.  And  then,  in  this  sense, 
it  is  more  than  clear,  that  if  the  Roman  Church 
will  neither  reform  nor  suffer  reformation,  it  is 
lawful  for  any  other  particular  Church  to  re- 
form itself,  so  long  as  it  doth  it  peaceably  and 
orderly,  and  keeps  itself  to  the  foundation  and 
free  from  sacrilege."  7 

And  here  I  close  this  preliminary  sketch, 
which,  nevertheless,  has  seemed  necessary 
'  "Conference,"  ut  sup.  pp.  127,  129. 


The  English  Reformation.  39 

that  we  may  intelligently  approach  the  top- 
ics of  which  I  propose  to  treat ;  the  treat- 
ment of  which,  though  it  will  by  no  means 
be  a  connected,  chronological  history  of  the 
English  Reformation,  will,  I  hope,  serve  to 
shew  how  that  reformation  has  placed  within 
the  reach  of  the  Churches  in  communion 
with  our  English  mother,  "  the  three  great 
springs  of  power  which  have  been  given  sep- 
arately to  others — the  simplicity  of  a  pure 
creed,  the  strength  of  a  continuous  organi- 
zation, and  the  freedom  of  personal  faith." 8 

s  Dean  Boyle's  "  Farewell  address  to  his  parishioners  at  Kid- 
derminster." 


LECTURE   II. 

EVILS  TO  BE  REFORMED— AGENTS— PRIN- 
CIPLE ACTED  ON — SOURCES  OF  IN- 
FORMATION; AND'  ALLEGED 
VARIATIONS. 


LECTURE  II. 

EVILS   TO  BE  REFORMED— AGENTS— PRIN- 
CIPLE ACTED   ON— SOURCES  OF  IN- 
FORMATION;  AND  ALLEGED 
VARIATIONS. 

TN  my  first  lecture  I  called  attention  to  cer- 
tain  general  facts,  not  specifically  con- 
nected with  the  Anglican  Reformation,  which, 
nevertheless,  it  was  needful  to  consider  in 
order  that  we  might  approach  intelligently 
the  topic  in  hand.  Turning  now  to  that 
topic,  I  must  ask  you,  at  the  outset,  to  go 
along  with  me  in  the  endeavor  to  point  out 
and,  so  far  as  may  be,  to  classify,  the  evils 
with  which  reform,  if  it  were  to  be  to  any 
purpose,  must  necessarily  deal.  A  real  refor- 
mation must  concern  itself  with  actually  ex- 
isting evils;  and  the  lines  of  ita  outworking 
must  be  settled  and  determined  by  such  evils. 
Any  other  reformation  would  be  so  entirely 


44  The  English  Reformation. 

— — 1 

theoretical  and  doctrinaire  in  character,  that 

it  would  have  neither  practical  effect  nor  abid- 
ing life.  The  grandest  exhibition  of  the  dif- 
ference between  such  methods  which  history 
records  was  given  to  the  world,  when  philoso- 
phers were  dreaming  over  plans  for  reforming 
the  evils  that  weighed  down  the  nations  and 
accomplished  nothing;  and  the  disciples  of 
Christ's  religion  grappled  with  the  evils  prac- 
tically, and  did  the  work.  Nor  could  a  mere 
theoretical  reformation,  however  perfect  in  its 
arrangements,  have  commended  itself  to  the 
convictions  or  commanded  the  support  of  the 
English  people;  a  people  always  caring  less 
for  logical  consistency  than  for  practical  result. 

What  then  were  the  ecclesiastical  evils, 
wrongs,  perversions  of  true  and  good  things 
that  were  pressing  on  Englishmen  in  the  six- 
teenth century;  and  can  they  be  classified  in 
any  intelligent  fashion  ? 

Let  us  go  back,  just  here,  to  a  memorable 
day,  Feb.  6,  1512,  when  John  Colet,  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's,  preached  the  sermon  before  the 
Convocation  of  the  province  of  Canterbury. 


The  English  Reformation.  45 

I  have  called  the  day  a  memorable  one;  it 
was  made  so  by  that  outspoken  sermon.  The 
assembly  before  which  Colet  stood  was  most 
truly  representative.  There  sat  Warham,  the 
Archbishop,  the  friend  of  the  "new  learn- 
ing," the  patron  and  protector  of  Erasmus; 
Fitz-James  (promoted  for  his  secular  services 
to  Rochester,  Chichester,  and  London  suc- 
cessively), the  embodiment  of  the  stiffest 
and  most  starched  conservatism  of  the  day, 
and  so  fierce  against  all  heresy  that  An- 
dreas Ammonius  writes,  in  ghastly  jesting,  to 
Erasmus,  that  "wood  is  scarce  and  dear  in 
London  because  so  much  is  used  in  burning 
heretics";  Stanley  of  Ely,  a  notorious  and 
open  profligate;  a  nameless  bishop,  who  of- 
fered to  Erasmus  a  benefice  and  a  large  sum 
of  money  if  he  would  become  his  tutor  for 
a  year;  a  bishop  satirized  by  More,  under  the 
name  of  Posthumus,  as  distinguished  from 
other  bishops,  who  were  usually  selected  at 
random,  by  the  exceptional  care  exhibited 
in  his,  case  in  selecting  a  man  hopelessly  ig- 
norant and  stupid;  there  were  bishops  who 


46  The  English  Reformation. 

owed  their  rapid  translations  and  promo- 
tions not  at  all  to  successful  discharge  of 
episcopal  duty,  but  "  whose  benefices  were 
the  reward  of  purely  secular  services,  and 
who,  consequently,  had  hardly  a  chance  of 
discharging  with  diligence  their  spiritual  and . 
pastoral  functions";  and,  to  name  no  more, 
there  was  Wolsey,  with  all  his  course  before 
him,  just  beginning  to  tread  "the  ways  of 
glory,"  and  sound  "the  depths  and  shoals 
of  honor,"  destined  to  find  to  his  sorrow, 

"How  wretched 
Is  that  poor  man  that  hangs  on  princes'  favors." 

There  were  vacant  places,  also,  in  that  as- 
sembly, that  had  their  own  tale  to  tell.  The 
sees  of  Bath  and  Wells  and  of  Worcester  were 
held  in  those  days  by  two  non-resident  Italian 
prelates,  whose  main  connection  with  their 
dioceses  seems  to  have  been  to  receive  from 
them  the  revenues  which  they  spent  at  Rome. 
These  instances  exhibit  the  culmination  of  one 
line  of  papal  interference,  and  that  a  disastrous 
one,  in  England;  though  it  is  not  to  be  for- 


The  English   Reformation.  47 

gotten  that  more  than  these  two  prelates  then 
held  their  sees,  in  the  very  teeth  of  the  stat- 
utes of  the  realm,  by  papal  provision.9 

Of  those  who  composed  the  Lower  House 
there  were  doubtless  some  whose  sympathies 
went  with  Colet,  not  only  in  the  practical 
matters  touched  on  in  his  sermon,  but  also 
in  his  dislike  of  the  new  theology  of  the 
schoolmen,  and  his  desire  "to  restore  the 
theological  studies  that  were  founded  upon 
the  Scriptures  and  the  primitive  Fathers";  in 
his  opposition  to  the  compulsory  celibacy  of 
the  clergy;  in  his  objections  to  the  worship 
of  images;  in  his  denunciation  of  "anxious 
and  frequently  repeated  confession ";  in  his 

9  This  was  the  case  with  Sherburn  of  Chichester,  Oldham  of 
Exeter,  Mayew  or  Mayo  of  Hereford,  Smith  of  Lincoln,  etc. 
The  two  Italians  were  Adrian  Castello,  Bishop  of  Bath  and 
Wells,  and  Sylvester  Gigles,  or  Gigliis,  of  Worcester,  who  suc- 
ceeded his  uncle,  an  Italian,  in  the  see,  and  was  himself  succeeded 
by  another  Italian,  after  an  interval  of  about  two  years,  during 
which  time  the  see  was  administered  by  still  another  Italian, 
a  Cardinal  at  Rome.  Non-residence  was  thus  the  rule  at  Wor- 
cester for  nearly  forty  years..  See  Le  Neve's  "Fasti  Ecclesice 
Anglicana"  and  Seebohm's  "Oxford  Reformers,"  pp.  224,  ff. 


48  The  English  Reformation. 

practice  of  saying  mass  "only  upon  Sundays 
and  great  festivals";  and  in  those  educa- 
tional and  religious  reforms  which  appear  in 
all  the  arrangements  of  his  school  in  London, 
to  which  he  gave  the  name  of  the  great  apos- 
tle, whom,  to  use  his  own  words,  he  "so  dearly 
loved  and  admired."10 

But  besides  these  there  must  have  been 
others — probably  a  much  more  numerous  body 
than  the  former — to  whom  such  thoughts  were, 
to  say  nothing  of  principles  and  acts,  blank 
and  atrocious  heresy;  men  who  "hated  the 
pernicious  innovation  of  the  Greek  tongue," 
and  sneered  at  Erasmus,  as  Grceculus  iste;  to 
whom  the  study  of  the  Scriptures  was  as  "the 
root  of  all  evil";  who  accepted  the  specular 
tions  of  the  schoolmen,  even  before  they  had 
been  petrified  at  Trent,  as  articles  of  faith; 
and  to  whom  not  the  successional  Church, 
semper  et  ubique,  but  the  present  Church, 
under  the  headship  of  the  Roman  pontiff, 
was  the  "pillar  and  ground  of  the  truth." 
.  Before  such  an  assembly  the  brave  Dean 

10  "Letters  of  Erasmus,"  quoted  by  Knight. 


The  English  Reformation.  49 

of  St.  Paul's  stood  up  and  spoke  of  the  need 
of  reformation.  He  touches,  naturally,  on  evils 
of  practice  rather  than  anything  else;  but  the 
dealing  with  those  must  have  brought  in  its 
train  the  dealing  with  doctrines  from  which 
they  originated,  or  with  which  they  were  close- 
ly connected.  His  beadroll  of  evils  is  a  most 
striking  one,  and  contains  the  justification  of 
many  complaints  in  later  years  which  are  now 
sometimes  spoken  of  as  mere  pretences  and  vain 
shews.  But  here  it  is  not  a  layman  who  speaks 
to  laymen,  or  a  body  of  laymen  which  speaks 
to  the  sovereign;  it  is  a  cleric,  high  in  position 
and  pure  in  life,  who  speaks  to  a  body  of  cler- 
gymen. 

When  Colet  comes  to  the  second  part  of  his 
noble  sermon,  he  begins  by  asserting  that  what 
is  needed  to  effect  reform  is  not  the  enactment 
of  new  laws  (of  which  he  says — in  words  that 
are  not  unfitting  to  our  own  days — there  are 
enough  and  to  spare),  but  the  faithful  ap- 
plication of  existing  laws;  while  his  line  of 
remark  makes  it  clear  that  he  has  specially 
in  mind  the  ancient  canons  and  the  early 


50  The  English  Reformation. 

, j 

councils.  He  denounces,  in  terse  and  cogent 
phrases,  rash  ordinations  of  unlearned  and  evil 
living  priests;  promotions  not  for  merit  but 
by  favor,  so  that  "  instead  of  elders,  boys,  in- 
stead of  wise  men,  fools,  instead  of  good  men, 
evil  ones  rule  and  reign";  simony  which  is  a 
plague  and  a  contagion  among  priests;  non- 
residence  of  those  having  cure  of  souls  with 
all  its  train  of  evils;  the  secularity  of  the 
clergy,  and  their  evil  manners;  the  equal  sec- 
ularity of  monks;  uncanonical  election  of  bish- 
ops more  concerned  with  earthly  things  than 
with  those  of  Christ;  episcopal  non-residence 
with  its  neglect  of  preaching  and  ministering 
sacraments,  and  its  lack  of  care  for  the  poor; 
the  squandering  of  the  patrimony  of  the  Church; 
the  corruptions  of  the  ecclesiastical  courts  with 
their  inventions  for  getting  money  and  their 
foul  avarice;  and  the  neglect  of  provincial  as 
well  as  general  councils.1  Had  the  sugges- 

1  See  the  Sermon  in  Knight's « « Life  of  Colet, "  p.  238 ;  Seebohm's 
"Oxford  Reformers"  etc.,  p.  230.  I  wish  we  could  say  that  the 
Reformation  extinguished  all  these  ingrained  evils,  especially  those 
of  episcopal  and  clerical  non-residence  and  pluralities.  But  the 


The  English  Reformation.  51 

tions  of  Colet  been  acted  on,  there  would 
have  been  less  occasion  for  the  accusation  of 
the  Ordinaries  by  the  Commons  in  1532. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  long  on  the  scene  and  the 
sermon  of  Feb.  6,  1512,  because  they  present 
so  distinct  a  picture  of  the  then  present,  and 
afford  so  clear  an  indication  of  the  coming  fu- 
ture of  the  Church  of  England.  They  shew 
what  thoughts  were  in  the  minds  of  thought- 
ful men;  what  ideas  were  coming  to  the  front; 
what  collisions  of  intellectual  and  religious  prin- 
ciples and  forces  were  impending.  They  illus- 
trate the  three  causes  of  the  cry  for  reform 
spoken  of  in  my  last  lecture.  They  intimate 
the  method  of  reform  that  will  be  adopted, 
the  action  of  a  National  Church  in  a  National 
Synod.  They  suggest  the  appeal,  by  which 
that  reform  will  shape  itself,  to  Holy  Script- 
ure and  ancient  authors.  Nor  is  it  difficult  to 

not  unfounded  complaints  of  the  Puritans  at  the  Hampton  Court 
Conference,  in  1604,  and  the  wretched  facts  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury shew  how  rooted  these  last  named  evils  were.  See  Cardwell's 
"Conferences,"  c.  iv.;  and  Overton  and  Abbey,  "History  of  the 
English  Church  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,"  vol.  ii.  c.  i. 


52  The  English  Reformation. 

$ 

see  the  foreshadowing  of  the  lines  which  it  will 
take,  and  the  evils  with  which  it  will  deal,  evils 
which  I  will  state  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Blunt: 
"  The  organic  or  constitutional  abuses,  indicated 
by  so  many  writers,  as  eating  out  the  heart  of 
the  Church;  the  doctrinal  errors  which  had 
grown  up  in  mediaeval  times;  and  the  supersti- 
tions with  which  religion  had  been  burdened;" 
to  use  the  familiar  phraseology  of  the  preface  to 
our  own  Prayer  Book,  abuses  and  corruptions 
in  Discipline,  in  Doctrine,  and  in  Worship.  * 

But  there  are  still  other  things  to  be  taken 
into  account  before  we  have  completed  our 
proposed  view  of  the  lines  in  which  reform 
will  run,  and  the  forces  that  will  be  brought 
to  bear  upon  it.  Many  misrepresentations  of 
the  real  character  of  the  Anglican  Reforma- 
tion are  due  to  misconceptions  in  regard  to 
the  matters  of  which  I  proceed  to  speak. 

It  requires  no  very  extended  or  careful  view 
of  the  usurpations  of  the  Papacy,  to  see  that 
they  everywhere  interfered  with  the  ancient 
and  established  rights  of  rulers,  and  the  rela- 

2  Blunt,  "Reformation,"  p.  21. 


The  English  Reformation.  53 

tions  of  subjects  to  the  civil  government.  Such 
interference  enters  into  the  Roman  ideal  of 
the  practical  working  of  the  Church  to-day; 
and  it  was  far  less  an  ideal  and  more  a  reality 
in  the  sixteenth  century. 3 

In  England,  the  ancient  prerogatives  and 
rights  of  the  Sovereign  in  regard  to  the  ap- 
pointment of  bishops,  the  holding  of  synods, 
the  determining  all  criminal  causes  in  the 
courts  of  the  realm,  had  been  seriously  inter- 

3  It  is  worth  while  to  compare  the  claims  of  Boniface  VIII.,  in 
the  Bull  Unam  Sanctam,  1302,  of  Paul  IV.,  in  the  Bull  Cum  ex 
Apostolatus  Officio,  as  late  as  1558,  of  Gregory  XI.,  Gregory  XII., 
Pius  V.,  and  Urban  VIII.,  in  the  Bull  In  Ccena  Domini,  from  1372 
to  1627,  and  of  Pius  IX.,  in  the  Syllabus  of  1864,  with  the  Irish 
Remonstrance  of  1661,  the  Declaration  of  the  Irish  Roman  Cath- 
olic Committee  in  1757,  the  Protestation  of  the  entire  Roman 
Communion  in  England  in  1789,  the  Synodical  Declaration  of  the 
Irish  Bishops  in  1810,  and  the  Testimony  of  Bishop  Doyle  and 
others  before  the  Committee  of  the  House  of  Lords  in  1825-26. 
The  comparison  will  shew  that  opposition  to  papal  claims  which 
was  not  formally  condemned  during  the  middle  ages,  and,  even 
down  to  our  own  times,  is  now  "judicially  extinguished  within 
the  papal  Church,  by  the  recent  decrees  of  the  Vatican  Council," 
in  1870.  See  Gladstone's  "Newest  Fashions"  etc.;  "Janus;" 
Prof.  Friedrich's  "  Documental 


54  The  English  Reformation. 

fered  with  by  papal  encroachments;  and  the 
relations  of  the  subject  to  the  civil  government 
had  been  equally  interfered  with  by  the  trial 
of  criminous  clerks,  and  persons  claiming  bene- 
fit of  clergy,  not  in  the  civil  but  in  the  eccles- 
iastical courts  with  final  appeal  to  Rome.  I 
am  now  merely  mentioning  instances,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  and  in  illustration  of  the  statement 
just  made.  The  subject  must  come  up  again 
in  more  specific  detail. 

How  were  these  wrongs — for  whether  the 
older 'state  of  things  was,  in  itself  considered, 
good  or  bad  is  nothing  to  us  here;  if  good  the 
unlawful  change  only  made  it  bad,  if  bad  the 
same  change  did  not  make  it  better; — how  were 
these  wrongs  to  be  righted  ?  Surely  only  by 
that  power  whose  ancient  immunities  had  been 
attacked,  that  is  by  the  civil  power,  vested 
in  the  Sovereign  and  Parliament  of  England. 
To  that  extent  then  the  civil  power  must  par- 
ticipate in  any  practical  reformation  dealing 
with  actual  wrongs  and  evils. 

But  this  is  not  all.  The  universal  theory 
in  Europe — and  in  that  word  one  includes 


The  English  Reformation.  55 

England — in  the  sixteenth  century,  was  that 
spiritual  sentences  and  laws  could  not  stand 
on  their  spiritual  character  alone,  but  must 
also  have  the  force  and  penalties  of  civil  law 
annexed  to  them.  They  must  be  made  ef- 
fective in  foro  contentioso,  by  compulsory  pen- 
alties of  the  state,  as  well  as  in  foro  con- 
scientiae,  by  spiritual  penalties  of  the  Church.4 
The  right  or  the  wrong  of  this  theory  is,  again, 
nothing  to  us  just  here.  All  we  have  to  do 
with  is  the  fact  that  it  existed — and  had  long 
been  in  existence — in  the  sixteenth  century; 
that  it  was  universally  held;  and  that  it  must 
enter  as  a  factor  into  any  plan  of  reform.  It 
is  needless  to  add  that  the  civil  power  is  thus 
again  brought  prominently  forward. 

The  lines,  therefore,  on  which  we  may  ex- 
pect the  Anglican  Reformation  to  move  will 
be  constitutional,  ritual,  and  doctrinal.  And 
the  forces  which  will  be  brought  to  bear  upon 
the  work  must,  from  the  necessities  of  the 
case  and  the  universal  theory  of  the  time,  be 

4  See  Wharton's  "Troubles  and  Trials  of  Abp.  Laud,"  ed. 
1695,  p.  309. 


56  The  English  Reformation. 

ecclesiastical  and  civil,  or,  if  the  phrase  is  pre- 
ferred, spiritual  and  temporal.  The  compre- 
hension and  application  of  these  plain  facts  and 
principles  will  brush  away  a  good  deal  of  vague 
and  declamatory  talk  about  the  Reformed 
Church  of  England  being  a  parliamentary 
Church  and  a  creation  of  the  State;  and  will 
justify  the  terse  but  exhaustive  statement  of 
Archbishop  Laud,  "  In  the  Reformation,  .  .  our 
princes  had  their  parts  and  the  clergy  theirs."5 
I  called  attention,  in  my  first  lecture,  to  the 
important  fact  that  synodical  action,  as  over 
against  individual  action,  had  preserved  our 
Reformed  Church  from  taking  on  the  impress 
of  the  mind,  or  receiving  the  name  of  any 
single  leader.  The  considerations  just  brought 
to  your  notice  illustrate  the  same  truth  more 
fully.  But  something  more  is  necessary  to 
present  it  in  its  completeness.  Keeping  our 
eyes  fixed  on  England,  we  find  (not  forgetting 
the  general  causes,  already  mentioned,  of  the 
universal  cry  for  reform),  three  elements  at 
work  which  deserve  careful  attention, 
s  Laud,  "Conf.  with  Fisher,"  p.  127. 


The  English  Reformation.  57 

The  first  of  these  is  that  ever  increasing 
opposition  to  the  usurpations  of  the  papacy 
which  was  evinced  by  the  great  body  of  the 
bishops,  and  which  could  not  but  be  felt  most 
deeply  by  the  civil  power.  This  opposition, 
as  will  appear  more  Tully  in  due  time,  had 
come  to  the  surface  on  many  occasions  an- 
terior to  its  final  explosion  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  So  long,  however,  as  the  protracted 
contest  between  the  sovereign  and  the  barons 
was  going  on,  with  its  engrossing  interests 
and  its  varying  fortunes,  such  an  explosion 
was  impossible;  while  the  two  great  agen- 
cies of  papal  encroachments,  force  and  fraud, 
had  "  ample  room  and  verge  enough "  to 
work  in. 

The  second  element  is  found  in  the  im- 
proved condition  of  the  universities,  in  the 
abandonment  of  mere  scholasticism,  and  the 
study  of  Holy  Scripture  and  the  Early  Fa- 
thers; and  would  tell,  if  not  entirely  yet, 
mainly  on  scholars. 

The  third  appears  "in  the  direct  influence 
which  was  exerted  by  the  circulation  in  Eng- 


58  The  English  Reformation. 

) 

land,' — beginning  as  early  as  1520,— of  Lu- 
theran tracts  and  other  publications  of  a  simi- 
lar character";  and  would  naturally  take  up 
into  itself  whatever  remained  of  the  "  earlier 
Lollard  movement,  and  thus  affect  the  great 
body  of  the  people."6  * 

Here  were  great  possibilities  for  good,  per- 
haps we  may  say  almost  equal  possibilities 
for  evil.  Had  any  one  of  these  elements  be- 
come effective,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other 
two,  we  might  have  seen  a  reform  simply  re- 
"jecting  the  papal  claims  and  regulating  the 
hierarchy,  while  doctrine  and  ritual  remained 
untouched;  or  one  dealing  exclusively  with 
doctrine,  and  putting  ritual  and  the  hierarchy 
to  one  side;  or,  lastly,  one  without  guidance 
or  direction,  and  losing  itself  in  a  confusion 
little  short  of  anarchy. 

The  overruling  providence  of  God  averted, 
in  good  measure,  these  several  dangers;  while 
from  the  joint  operation  of  all  those  "  agencies 
combined,  and  modified  through  combination," 

•  Hardwick,  "Reformation,"  p.  181,  ff.  This  classification  of 
causes  peculiar  to  England  is  taken  from  him. 


The  English  Reformation.  59 

working  on  the  lines,  in  the  methods,  by  the 
forces  already  indicated,  rose  the  complex 
structure  known  as  the  "  Reformed  Church 
of  England";  whose  eventful  history  has, 
therefore,  ever  since  exhibited  the  working 
of  various  elements,  instinct  with  life  and 
spirit;  sometimes,  indeed,  jarring  with  each 
other,  but  never,  God  be  thanked — except  with 
some  ungoverned  spirits — destroying  unity.7 

M.  Guizot,  in  his  History  of  Civilization,8 
has  an  observation  which  seems  to  me  worth 
quoting  at  this  point.  He  says,  "When  we. 
look  at  the  civilizations  which  have  preceded 
that  of  Modern  Europe,  whether  in  Asia  or 
elsewhere,  including  even  those  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  it  is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  with 
the  unity  of  character  which  reigns  among 
them.  Each  appears  as  though  it  had  ema- 
nated from  a  single  fact,  a  single  idea."  And 
then,  after  shewing  how  entirely  different 
European  civilization  is  in  this  regard,  in  its 
principles  of  organization,  its  sentiments,  its 


7  Hardwick,  "Reformation,"  pp. 

8  Lect.  ii.  Am.  Ed.  p.  35  ff. 


60  The  English  Reformation. 

1 

opinions,   its   literature,   he   adds,    "  While    in 

other  civilizations  the  exclusive  domination, 
or  at  least  the  excessive  preponderance,  of  a 
single  principle,  of  a  single  form,  led  to  tyr- 
anny, in  modern  Europe  the  diversity  of  the 
elements  of  social  order,  the  incapability  of 
any  one  to  exclude  the  rest  gave  birth  to  the 
liberty  which  now  prevails." 

I  am  aware  that  comparisons  do  not,  as  it 
is  said,  go  on  all  fours.  They  do,  however, 
illustrate.  And  unless  I  greatly  err,  we  find 
in  Guizot's  striking  contrast  a  very  apt  illus- 
tration of  the  difference  between  the  Early 
Church  on  the  one  side  and  the  Modern  Tri- 
dentine  Church  on  the  other,  between  the 
results  of  the  Anglican  and  the  Continental 
Reformations.  In  the  Tridentine  Church  and 
the  Continental  Reformations,  such  a  predom- 
inance of  one  idea,  such  a  dependence  on  one 
master,  such  an  assertion  of  one  thing  as  the 
articulus  stantis  vel  cadentis  Ecclesice,  as  that 
when  that  one  master  falls,  that  one  idea 
and  article  give  way,  then  the  tyranny,  so  en- 
gendered, passes  into  utter  license.  In  the 


The  English  Reformation.  6 1 

Early  Church  and  the  Anglican  Reformation,, 
such  an  absence  of  a  single  master,  and  of 
one  overmastering  idea,  such  a  balance  and 
reciprocal  influence  of  elements  and  factors, 
as  that  permanent  tyranny  becomes  well-nigh 
impossible,  and  there  can  be  no  break  down 
that  will  involve  everything  in  ruin. 

We  have  now  reached  the  point  where  a 
question  arises  as  to  the  principle  by  which 
measures  of  reform  were  regulated  and  shaped. 
This  is  a  most  important  inquiry.  For  no 
intelligent  estimate  can  be  formed  of  any 
movement,  however  clearly  we  may  have  be- 
fore our  minds  agencies,  methods,  and  factors, 
until  we  have  also  an  equally  clear  insight 
into  the  principle  that  underlies  and  guides  it. 

In  the  present  case  this  principle  is  not  dif- 
ficult to  find.  Colet  stated  it  in  advance, 
when,  before  the  sixteenth  century  had  fairly 
opened,  he  wrote  to  Erasmus  of  his  earnest 
wish  to  recall  men  to  "  the  Scriptures  and  the 
primitive  Fathers."  It  was  a  voice  from  Ox- 
ford repeating  the  cry  of  Bernard  uttered 
nearly  four  hundred  years  before.  It  was  the 


62  The  English  Reformation. 

; 1 ; > 

watchword   of  our  Reformation.     It   is   heard 

over  and  over  again  as  the  years  go  by.  The 
fact  is  too  patent  to  need  more  than  a  rapid 
summary  of  its  proofs.  Beginning,  then,  with 
the  action  touching  the  papal  jurisdiction  and 
the  royal  supremacy  from  1531  to  1533,  we 
pass  on  to  the  Ten  Articles  of  1536,  The  In- 
stitution of  a  Christian  Man  in  1537,  The 
Erudition  of  a  Christian  Man  in  1543,  the 
Homilies  of  1547,  The  Act  Ordering  Admin- 
istration of  the  Eucharist  in  both  Kinds  of 
1547,  The  Preface  to  the  Prayer  Book  of 
1549,  The  Ordinal  of  1550,  the  Reformatio 
Legum  of  1552,  the  Act  of  Supremacy  of  1559, 
the  Homilies  of  1562,  the  Canon  of  Preachers 
in  1571,  and  we  find,  all  through,  the  appeal 
to  Holy  Scriptures  and  the  Early  Church  rec- 
ognized and  applied  in  synodical  or  quasi 
synodical  action.  So  that  "  in  England  the 
supremacy  and  sufficiency  of  Scripture  was 
maintained,  not  against  a  Catholic  tradition 
teaching  the  same  doctrines  as  Scripture  itself, 
and  therefore  strictly  confirmatory  of  Script- 
ure; but  against  a  tradition  imagined  to  con- 


The  English  Reformation.  63 

vey  articles  of  faith  in  addition  to  those  which 
Scripture  contained."9  Around  these  synodi- 
cal  acts  gather  a  host  of  Anglican  divines, 
whose  names  require  no  mention.  The  con- 
sensus of  synods  and  divines  is  clear,  uniform, 
continuous,  and,  I  may  say,  unanimous. 

Nor  is  there  anything  new  and  of  the  nature 
of  a  discovery  in  all  this.  It  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  rule  of  "  universality,  an- 
tiquity and  consent,"  laid  down  by  Vincent 
of  Lerins,  more  than  a  thousand  years  before 
our  Reformation.10  As  many  persons  seem  to 
have  taken  a  crude  and  unintelligent  view  of 
this  canon  of  Vincent,  let  me,  especially  be- 
cause of  its  connection  with  our  own  work  of 
reform,  call  your  attention  to  the  safeguards 
and  limitations  under  which  he  sets  it  forth. 

First,   he   "  guards   carefully   against    being 

9  Palmer,  "  Treatise  of  the  Church  of  Christ,"  vol.  i.  p.  454. 
Am.  Ed.  He  quotes  the  title  of  a  treatise  of  Dr.  Smythe  (a 
papist),  "Zte  Veritatibus  non  Scriptis"  as  shewing  the  animus 
of  the  papal  £arty.  See  also  J.  J.  Blunt,  "Right  Use  of  the 
Early  Fathers,"  lect.  i. 

Jo  "  Commonitorium"  c.  xxvii.  ff. 


64  The  English  Reformation. 

j 

supposed  for  one  instant"  to  deny  the  suffi- 
ciency of  Scripture,  or  "  to  put  Scripture  and 
Tradition  on  a  par,  or  to  amalgamate  them 
like  two  equal  co-ordinate  elements  in  one 
Rule  of  Faith."1  After  saying  that  it  has 
ever  been  the  custom  in  the  Church  to  prove 
the  Faith  "  first  by  the  authority  of  the  Divine 
Canon,  then  by  the  tradition  of  the  Catholic 
Church,"  he  goes  on  to  explain  what  he  means 
by  this.  "Not  that  the  Canon  alone  is  not  self- 
sufficient  for  all  purposes:  but  because  very 
many  persons  interpreting  the  Divine  Words 
according  to  their  own  judgment  conceive  va- 
rious opinions  and  errors,  and  that  therefore 
it  is  necessary  that  the  understanding  of  the 
heavenly  Scriptures  be  directed  to  the  one  rule 
of  ecclesiastical  meaning;  chiefly,  however,  in 
those  questions  on  which  rest  the  foundations 
of  the  entire  Catholic  Faith."  2 

Thus  by  anticipation  he  asserts  with  us  the 
supremacy  and  sufficiency  of  the  written  Word; 
and  denies  beforehand  the  Roman  doctrine  of 

1  Owen,  "Int.  to  Dogmat.  Theol.,"  p.  35. 

2  "  Comm."  c.  xxix. 


The  English  Reformation.  65 

to-day,  that  the  Word  of  God  is  contained  "  in 
written  books  and  unwritten  traditions;"3  and 
would  employ  what  he  calls  tradition  (and 
what  he  means  by  that  we  shall  see  imme- 
diately), only  as  a  help  in  attaining  the  mean- 
ing of  Scripture,  and,  therefore,  as  entirely 
subsidiary  to  it. 

Secondly,  in  shewing  what  he  means  by  this 
subsidiary  tradition  and  how  he  would  apply 
it,  he  says:  "And  if  at  any  time  a  part 
shall  have  rebelled  against  universality,  novel- 
ty against  antiquity,  the  dissent  of  one  or  a 
few.  .  .  against  the  consent  of  all,  or  at  least 
by  far  the  majority,  ...  let  them  prefer  the  in- 
tegrity of  the  universality  to  the  corruption 
of  the  past.  In  which  same  universality,  let 
them  prefer  the  religion  of  antiquity  to  the 
profaneness  of  novelty;  and  also,  in  antiquity 
itself,  let  them  first  of  all  prefer  the  general 
decrees,  if  there  be  any,  of  a  universal  Coun- 
cil to  the  temerity  of  one  or  of  very  few;  then 
in  the  next  place,  if  that  does  not  exist,  the 
sentiments  of  many  and  great  masters  agree- 

a  Trent,  Sess.  iv. 


66  The  English  Reformation. 

ing  with  each  other."4  Thus  he  refuses  to  make 
universality  at  any  one  time,  without  regard 
to  continuousness  from  the  beginning,  a  test 
of  truth;  so  holding  together  the  ubique  and 
the  semper,  and  showing  that  what  he  means 
by  tradition  is  not  some  uncertain  unwritten 
thing  declared  somehow,  by  the  Church  at 
different  times;  but  the  consentient  written, 
documentary  testimony  of  universal  Councils 
and  "  great  masters." 

And,  finally,  to  shew  under  what  limitations 
his  rule  is  to  be  applied,  he  says:  "  Which  an- 
cient consent  of  the  Holy  Fathers  is  to  be  in- 
vestigated and  followed  by  us  with  great  zeal 
not  in  all  questions  of  the  Divine  Law,  but 
only,  at  least  principally,  in  the  Rule  of  Faith!' 5 
Thus  he  recognizes  room  for  freedom  of  opin- 
ion, while  still  there  is  unity  in  the  Faith. 
The  position  taken  is  throughout  a  prophetic 
protest  against  the  doctrine  of  the  "  Holy 
Roman  Church"  in  and  since  the  Council  of 
Trent,  and  a  prophetic  defence  of  the  English 
Reformation.  After  all,  this  is  no  more  than 

4  "  Common."  c.  xxyii.  *  "  Common"  c.  xxviii. 


The  English  Reformation.  67 

what  appears  in  the  action  of  the  Council  of 
Nicaea  touching  the  creed,  and  in  its  well- 
known  sixth  canon;  and  in  the  rule  of  Tertul- 
lian,  "The  first  is  true,  the  later  is  spurious."6 

It  is  the  more  necessary  to  put  this  subject 
clearly  and  distinctly  before  the  minds  of  all 
who  may  in  any  way  be  called  on  to  maintain 
or  defend  the  position  of  our  Church,  because 
the  conditions  under  which  we  must  do  our 
work  are  no  longer  what  they  were  three  cen- 
turies ago.7 

This  change  of  conditions  is  a  radical  one; 
although  it  only  affects  the  appeal  to  the 
transmitted  testimony  of  the  Church.  At  the 
time  of  the  Reformation  Rome  asserted,  as 
she  asserts  now,  that  God's  Word  is  con- 

«  Id  esse  verum  quodcunque  primum;  id  esse  adulterum  quod- 
cunque  posterius.  Adv.  Prax.  i. 

7  Nearly  forty  years  ago,  the  then  Bishop  of  Lincoln,  Dr.  Kaye, 
wrote  words  which  now  seem  prophetic.  "  If  we  mistake  not  the 
signs  of  the  times,  the  period  is  not  far  distant  when  the  whole 
controversy  between  the  English  and  Romish  Churches  will  be 
revived,  and  all  the  points  hi  dispute  again  brought  under  review. 
Of  these  points  none  is  more  important  than  the  question  respect- 
ing  Tradition."  Kaye's  "  Tertullian,"  p.  281. 


68  The  English  Reformation. 

! 

tained    in    Holy    Scripture    and  in    unwritten 

tradition  and  that  the  former  was  insufficient 
without  the  latter.  We,  on  the  contrary, 
maintained,  as  we  do  now,  that  God's  Word 
is  contained  in  Holy  Scripture  alone,  and  that 
this  Divine  Canon  is  entirely  sufficient  in  itself 
to  settle  all  controversies;  but  that  when  the 
meaning  of  the  Divine  Canon  is  disputed  then, 
as  subsidiary  and  auxiliary  to  it,  we  appeal  to 
what  may  be  called  tradition  if  you  will,  but 
what  might  better  be  termed  historic  testi- 
mony. This  was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  old 
Vincentine  rule  from  which  Rome  had  de- 
parted. 

Still,  the  nature  of  the  appeal  to  tradi- 
tion or  testimony  was  not  at  the  era  of  the 
Reformation  a  point  in  dispute,  at  least  not 
formally.  On  either  side  the  appeal  was  to 
documentary  testimony,  acts  of  Councils  and 
writings  of  Fathers.  No  doubt  there  was  all 
along  a  tendency  manifesting  itself  among  Ro- 
man controversialists  to  make  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  existing  Church,  its  present  theory 
in  doctrine  or  anything  else,  the  true  interpre- 


The  English  Reformation.  69 

ter  of  tradition,  let  documentary  testimony  be 
what  it  might.  No  doubt,  at  first,  this  ten- 
dency was  no  more  than  a  tendency,  and  even 
Trent  asserted,  that  the  tradition  "must  be 
preserved  by  continuous  succession  in  the  Cath- 
olic Church." 

This  tendency  has,  however,  in  our  day 
taken  definite  shape,  and  become  to  a  large 
extent  a  rule;  and  the  old  historical  appeal  is 
likely  to  be  pretty  much  abandoned.  Indeed 
it  has  been  lately  asserted,  permissu  superi- 
orum,  that  "  where  a  thing  is  once  commonly 
accepted  in  the  Church,  this  common  testi- 
mony of  the  living  Church,  is  an  infallible 
proof  that  this  opinion  is  contained  in  tradi- 
tion and  needs  no  documents  of  antiquity." 
When  history  can  thus  be  manufactured  to 
order,  the  historical  argument  becomes  less 
than  nugatory.  But  this  universal  solvent, 
the  arcanum  magnum  of  Romanism,  had  not 
been  brought  out  at  the  time  of  our  Refor- 
mation.8 

8  Cardinal  Newman  has  professed  his  weariness  of  our  anti- 
quarianism;  the  Abbe  Martin  enlarges  on  the  uncertainty  of 


70  The  English  Reformation. 

. — j 

Method,  agencies,  lines  of  reform  and  gov- 
erning principle  reduced  to  a  practical  rule, 
being  now  set  forth,  the  next  question  is, 
where  are  we  to  look  for  results;  how  are  we 
to  be  informed  correctly  as  to  what  our  Ref- 
ormation effected  ?  This  may  seem  a  simple 
and  almost  needless  question;  but  I  can  as- 
sure you  that  mistaken  or  heedless  answers 
to  it  have  been  the  occasion  of  very  great 
confusion.  And  yet  it  cannot  require  much 
or  troublesome  consideration  to  decide  how  it 
should  be  answered.  Synodal  acts,  authorita- 
tive documents,  in  some  cases  (for  the  reasons 
already  given)  acts  of  parliament,  and,  some- 
times, the  matured  views  of  leaders  are  the 

historical  estimates  of  character,  as  if  that  had  anything  to  do 
with  documentary  testimony  as  to  fact;  and  so  long  ago  as  1854, 
a  writer  hi  the  Revue  des  dettx  Mondes  said,  with  evident  satis- 
faction, "Le  catholique,  prenant  le  dogme  tel  que  le  temps  Fa 
fait,  est,  en  un  sens,  bien  plus  pres  de  la  grande  philosophic  que 
le  protestant,  qui  cherche  a  venir  sans  cesse  a  une  pretendue 
formule  primitive  du  Christianisme."  No  doubt  he  is.  But  sure- 
ly "dogma  such  as  time  has  made  it,"  is  not  quite  an  equivalent 
term  to  the  "  Faith  once  [for  all]  given  to  the  Saints."  See  Bp. 
Kaye's  excellent  remarks  in  his  "  Tertullian,"  pp.  284-86. 


The  English  Reformation.  71 

only  sources  of  real  information  as  to  the  re- 
sults of  the  Anglican  Reformation.  Instead 
of  this  method  of  research  and  appeal,  so  ob- 
viously right  and  trustworthy,  how  often  has 
some  obscure  and  worthless  treatise,  some 
chance  expression  in  a  hastily  written  letter, 
some  crude  opinion,  uttered  without  much 
thought  and  afterwards  retracted,  been  pressed 
into  prominence  as  exhibiting  such  results. 
Nor  is  it  to  be  forgotten  that  the  indiscrim- 
inating  antiquarianism  of  individuals  and  so- 
cieties, by  raking  out  of  obscurity  a  mass  of 
material  that  might  better  have  been  left  in 
well-deserved  oblivion,  has  greatly  increased 
this  misleading  confusion. 

Let  me  mention  an  instance  which  strikingly 
illustrates  what  has  just  been  said.  Lord  Ma- 
caulay  once  asserted  that  "  Cranmer,  on  one 
important  occasion,  plainly  avowed  his  con- 
viction that,  in  the  primitive  times,  there  was 
no  distinction  between  bishops  and  priests, 
and  that  the  laying  on  of  hands  was  altogether 
superfluous." 9 

9  "History  of  England,"  vol.  i.  p.  39.  Am.  Ed. 


72  The  English  Reformation. 

1 

Now  what   Lord   Macaulay  said,   is   in   the 

letter,  undoubtedly  true.  But  the  conclusions 
drawn  from  it  are  as  wide  of  the  truth  as  they 
well  can  be.  The  words  quoted  from  Cranmer 
occur  in  a  paper  drawn  up  in  1540,  and  doubt- 
less express  his  opinion  at  that  time.  But,  it 
must  be  remembered,  he  then  held  that  scho- 
lastic theory  in  which  he  had  been  trained, 
that  there  is  only  a  difference  in  office  ^  but 
none  at  all  in  order,  between  bishops  and 
priests — a  theory  common  to  Rome  and  Gen- 
eva, if,  indeed,  Geneva  did  not  receive  it  di- 
rectly from  Rome;  and  he  also  must  have 
held,  as  Eugenius  IV.  had  ruled,  that  the  es- 
sential thing  in  ordination  was,  not  the  impo- 
sition of  hands,  but  the  porrectio  instrumen- 
torumy  the  delivery  of  the  sacred  vessels,  etc.10 

10  See  Pearson,  "  Minor  Works,"  vol.  i.  pp.  274,  275;  Charles  Les- 
lie's "Discourse  on  Qualifications  to  administer  the  Sacraments," 
Works,  vol.  ii.,  p.  731;  Bishop  Charles  Wordsworth's  "Discourse 
on  the  Scottish  Reformation,"  App.  c.  vi.  The  words  of  Eugenius 
IV.  are,  "  Sextum  Sacramentum  est  Ordinis,  cujus  materia  est 
illud  per  cujus  traditionem  confertur  Ordo;  sicut  presbyteratus 
traditur  per  calicis  cum  vino  et  patenae  cum  pane  porrectionem. " 
Perrone  distinctly  says,  that  "almost  all  the  ancient  scholastic 


The  English  Reformation.  73 

Such  was  the  view  held  (not,  as  he  says, 
"temerariously"),  by  Cranmer  in  1540.  But 
let  us  pass  over  ten  years,  and  those  years  of 
most  careful  and  laborious  study,1  and  what 
do  we  then  find  as  his  matured  and  final  opin- 
ion, expressed,  not  in  a  hastily  written  paper, 
but  in  what  was  to  be  a  Formulary  of  the 
Church,  the  Preface  to  the  Ordinal?  Why, 
that  bishops  and  priests  are  distinct  orders  as 
well  as  offices  in  the  Church;  and  also  that  for 
conferring  those  orders  imposition  of  hands 
must  be  had.2  I  need  hardly  ask  what  is  to 
be  said  of  the  propriety  of  quoting  an  early 
and  evidently  doubtfully-held  opinion,  as  if 
it  were  the  settled  view  of  the  person  utter- 
ing it,  in  the  face  of  a  precisely  opposite  opin- 
ion, put  forth  as  solemnly  as  it  was  possi- 
ble it  should  be,  after  ten  years  of*  careful 

theologians,  with  whom  not  a  few  later  theologians  agree,  think 
that  the  matter  of  orders  resides  as  much  in  the  delivery  of  the  in- 
struments" as  hi  the  imposition  of  hands,  Pralectiones  (as 
abridged),  vol.  ii.,  p.  395.  See,  also,  for  Cranmer,  Jenkyns, 
"Works  of  Cranmer,"  vol.  i.  pp.  32-36. 

1  See  Jenkyns,  "Works,"  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  73;  iv.  p.  147. 

2  Compare  "Reformatio  Legum,"  in  1552. 


74  The  English  Reformation. 

\ 

study.  If  such  a  method  can  be  reconciled 
with  the  requirements  of  ordinarily  fair  deal- 
ing, then  no  man's  real  opinions  can  ever  be 
ascertained. 

Again,  we  are  told,  and  told  truly,  that  in 
the  "  Institution  of  a  Christian  Man,"  put  forth 
in  1537  (while  there  is  more  or  less  confusion 
of  statement,  arising  probably  from  the  med- 
iaeval theory  of  orders),  the  orders  of  bishops 
and  priests  are,  on  the  whole,  spoken  of  as 
identical;  and  on  this  fact  is  grounded  the 
further  assertion  that  this  is  the  synodical  rul- 
ing of  the  Church  of  England.  When,  how- 
ever, we  remember  that  the  "  Institution"  was 
never  submitted  to  Convocation,  but  was  the 
work  of  a  commission  appointed  by  the  crown, 
consisting  of  "all  the  bishops,  eight  arch- 
deacons and  seventeen  other  doctors  of  di- 
vinity," and  printed  by  royal  authority;  and 
when  we  remember,  further,  that  the  Ordinal, 
which  was  synodically  sanctioned  by  Convoca- 
tion in  1552,  contains  the  distinct  declaration 
that  there  is  a  difference  of  order  between 
bishops  and  priests,  it  is  not  difficult  to  see 


The  English  Reformation.  75 

where  the  truth  lies  and  how  the  error  has 
arisen.3 

These  instances,  it  seems  to  me,  illustrate, 
better  than  pages  of  mere  abstract  reasoning, 
the  danger  of  resorting  to  other  sources  of  in- 
formation than  those  which  have  been  indi- 
cated; and  justify  the  position  which  was  as- 
sumed in  indicating  them. 

But,  it  majr  be  said,  does  not  all  this  admit 
the  existence  of  variations  and  inconsistencies 
in  doctrine,  to  speak  of  nothing  more,  which 
must  seriously  damage,  if  it  does  not  utterly 
imperil,  the  claim  of  the  Church  of  England 
to  be  an  Ecclesia  docens,  a  teaching  Church  ? 
The  obvious  answer  to  this  question  is,  that, 
existing  corruptions  being  asserted,  and  it  being 
further  alleged  that  those  corruptions  came  in 
by  gradual  and  varying  accretions:  it  must  of 
necessity  follow  (until  it  is  shewn  that  such 
corruptions  did  not  exist,  and  did  not  come 
into  existence  in  the  way  alleged),  that  the 

3  See  J.  H.  Blunt's  "  Reformation, "  etc.,  p.  444,  f.;  Bp. 
Lloyd's  "Formularies,"  pp.  101-123;  Hardwick,  "History  of 
the  Articles,"  pp.  108-113. 


76  The  English  Reformation. 

variations  of  their  gradual  removal  cannot 
be  in  any  degree  as  damaging  to  the  char- 
acter of  a  Church  as  the  variations  of  their 
gradual  accretion.  And  what  other  varia- 
tions, let  me  ask,  than  those  which  necessa- 
rily inhere  in  such  gradual  removal  of  grad- 
ually compacted  errors,  are  chargeable  on  the 
Church  of  England  ?  Has  she,  like  other 
bodies,  which  I  will  not  here  name,  ever 
added  to  or  taken  from  the  great  historic 
creeds  of  Christendom  ?  Has  she  ever  laid  a 
finger  on  the  divine  constitution  of  the  Church 
in  the  three  Orders  of  the  Ministry  and  the 
equal  and  undivided  Episcopate  ?  Has  she 
ever  violated  that  law  of  worship  which  re- 
quires it  to  be  rendered  to  the  Three  Persons 
of  the  Adorable  Trinity  and  forbids  it  to  be 
given  to  any  others  ?  And  is  not  a  Church 
as  much  an  Ecclesia  docens  when  she  is  teach- 
ing and  propounding  the  one  Faith  "  whole 
and  undefiled,"  as  if  she  were  giving  utterance 
to  all  new-fangledness  and  teaching  the  latest 
discoveries  in  religion  ?  Is  not  "  the  teaching 
of  great  Christian  writers  fifteen  hundred  years 


The  English  Reformation.  77 

ago  as  much  part  of  the  living  voice  of  the 
Church  as  anything  spoken  in  our  day?"4 
Away  with  such  puerilities  !  If  these  charges 
are  to  be  pressed  against  our  Reformed  Church, 
they  will  recoil  with  tenfold  force  and  crush- 
ing weight  upon  those  who  make  them.5 

If  now  I  have  been  able  to  present  to  you 
a  reasonable  classification  of  the  matters  which, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century,  de- 
manded reform  in  the  Church  of  England;  to 
point  out  the  lines  which  any  practical  reform 
must  take  and  the  agencies  which,  from  the 
necessity  of  the  case  and  the  universally  ac- 
cepted theory  of 'the  time  as  to  the  relations 
of  the  temporal  and  the  spiritual  powers,  must 
be  concerned  in  it;  to  lay  before  you  the  va- 
rious elements  that  entered  into  the  complex 
work  and  their  accompanying  dangers;  to  set 
forth  the  great  guiding  law  under  which  the 
work  was  carried  on,  a  law  steadfastly  adhered 
to  by  us  but  abandoned  by  the  Roman  Church; 
to  shew  whither  we  are  to  go,  and  whither  we 

4  Dr.  Littledale's  "  Plain  Reasons,"  etc.,  p.  16. 

5  Palmer  "Treatise  on  the  Church,"  etc.,  part  ii.  c.  vii. 


78  The  English  Reformation. 

j 

are  not  to  go,  for  authoritative  and  correct  in- 
formation as  to  what  our  Reformation  effected; 
and,  in  any  degree,  to  vindicate  our  Reformed 
Church  from  the  reproach  of  damaging  and 
even  destructive  variations  in  doctrine,  disci- 
pline and  worship;  then,  my  purpose  in  the 
present  lecture  is  accomplished. 


LECTURE    III. 

ABOLITION  OF  PAPAL  JURISDICTION  IN 
ENGLAND. 


LECTURE    III. 

ABOLITION  OF  PAPAL    JURISDICTION  IN 
ENGLAND. 

TN  approaching  the  subject  of  my  present 
lecture,  I  must  ask  you  to  bear  in  mind 
that  we  are  not  entering  on  the  entire  ques- 
tion of  the  papacy,  but  only  on  its  relations 
to  the  Church  and  Realm  of  England.  His- 
toric facts  and  ecclesiastical  law  and  precedent 
must,  therefore,  be  the  two  factors  in  our  ar- 
gument. Those  expositions  of  Holy  Scripture 
which  stand  foremost  in  the  discussion  of  the 
papal  supremacy  as  such,  evidently  have  no 
place  here.  Those  wider  views  of  conciliar 
enactment  and  ecclesiastical  administration 
which  go  with  such  expositions  are,  for  the 
present,  put  to  one  side. 

No  doubt  that  wider  view,  that  great- 
er question,  should  never  be  forgotten.  No 
doubt,  if  the  papacy  is  "  anything  less  than  it 


82  The  English  Reformation. 

! ; \ 

has  asserted  itself  to  be,  if  it  is  not  in  every- 
thing the  divine  ordinance  of  our  blessed 
Lord  and  Saviour,  it  is  false,  a  fiction  and 
an  imposture."6  No  doubt,  if  law  and  pre- 
scription shew  that  it  has  no  claim  over  the 
Church  and  Realm  of  England,  that  fact  must 
tell  strongly  against  its  higher  claim,  and  take 
an  important  place  in  the  wider  argument. 
But  it  is  the  former,  not  the  latter,  that  we 
are  concerned  with  now. 

I  suppose  there  are  multitudes  of  persons 
who,  were  they  asked  to  state  their  ideas 
of  the  English  Reformation,  would  say,  that 
Henry  VIII.,  enraged  at  Clement  VII.  because 
that  Pontiff  would  not  grant  him  a  divorce 
from  his  queen,  Katharine  of  Aragon,  trans- 
ferred to  himself  the  power  of  the  Pope  in 
England,  and,  with  the  help  of  his  parlia- 
ment, set  up  a  new  church  of  his  own.  As- 
suredly this  is  "a  short  and  easy  method" 
of  disposing  of  the  English  Reformation  and 
of  our  Reformed  Church;  and,  therefore,  ac- 
ceptable to  those  who  value  Brevity  and  ease 

«  Hussey,  "Rise  of  the  Papal  Power,"  p.  209. 


The  English  Reformation.  83 

more  than  truth  and  accuracy;  and  accepta- 
ble also  to  those  who,  on  the  one  side  and 
the  other,  desire  to  make  out  a  case  against 
us. 

It  cannot  be  necessary  that  I  should  enter 
here  on  any  formal  line  of  argument  to  dis- 
prove this  preposterous  view.  It  would  be  an 
insult  to  your  intelligence  should  I  attempt 
it.  Some  mistakes  and  ir-relevancies  are,  how- 
ever, brought  out  in  it  which  ought  not  to 
be  passed  by  in  silence.  Let  me  speak  of 
these  by  way  of  preface  to  the  special  sub- 
ject of  my  present  lecture. 

First,  then,  we  have  here  a  striking  instance 
of  the  fallacy  of  mistaking  occasions  for  causes 
which  was  touched  upon  in  a  previous  lecture. 
The  complications  connected  with  the  King's 
marriage  to  Katharine  of  Aragon  gave  the 
occasion  for  action  touching  the  Papal  Su- 
premacy, the  causes  of  which  are  to  be  sought 
for  elsewhere.  Those  causes  were  various. 
Some  of  them  have  already  been  mentioned, 
others  will  be  considered  in  due  time.  They 
had  also  been  long  at  work;  though  their 


84  The  English  Reformation. 

: j 

operation  had  been  checked  and  thwarted 
by  many  things,  especially  by  the  protracted 
and  long  doubtful  struggle  between  the  sov- 
ereign and  the  barons,  which  may  be  said 
to  have  terminated  with  the  ending  of  the 
wars  of  the  roses  and  the  accession  of  Henry 
VII.  Cardinal  Manning  says,  most  truly,  in 
a  work  written  before  he  abandoned  the  Church 
of  England:  "  If  any. man  will  look  down  along 
the  line  of  early  English  history,  he  will  see 
a  standing  contest  between  the  rulers  of  this 
land  and  the  Bishops  of  Rome.  The  Crown 
and  Church  of  England  with  a  steady  oppo- 
sition, resisted  the  entrance  and  encroach- 
ment of  the  secularized  ecclesiastical  power 
of  the  Pope  in  England.  The  last  rejection 
of  it  was  no  more  than  a  successful  effort, 
after  many  a  failure  in  struggles  of  the  like 
kind." 7 

During  the  reign  of  Henry  VII.  no  occasion 
presented  itself  specially  calculated  to  bring 
the  two  forces  indicated  into  collision.  Nor 
was  there  such  occasion  offered  in  the  earlier 

7  "Unity  of  the  Church,"  p.  36,  Am.  Ed. 


The  English  Reformation.  85 

part  of  the  reign  of  his  successor.  There  are 
indeed  mutterings  heard  from  time  to  time, 
during  the  administration  of  Wolsey,  whose 
"well  known  nationalism"  could  never  have 
been  acceptable  at  Rome.  Complaints  come 
from  the  papal  court  in  1516  that  "the  tenth" 
has  been  refused  to  the  Pope;  that  indulgences 
cannot  be  sold  in  England  except  under  con- 
ditions altogether  distasteful  to  the  Curia;  and, 
in  1518,  the  Pope  complains  that  he  hears 
so  little  from  England.  On  the  other  hand 
the  Pope  does  hear  from  England,  in  1518, 
that  on  a  state  occasion,  at  court,  "little  re- 
spect was  shown  to  the  See  Apostolic";  and, 
in  1525,  we  learn  that  Wolsey  wrote  "sharp 
though  affectionate  letters"  to  the  Pope,  and 
the  hope  is  expressed  that  "  His  Holiness 
hath  taken  this  sour  sauce,  sweetly  powdered, 
to  his  edification." 8  All  these  things  point 
in  one  direction;  but  they  must  have  come 
to  nothing,  because  Wolsey  was  all  the  time 
acting  as  legate  and  representative  of  the 
Pope,  and  could  not,  therefore,  touch  that 
8  J.  H.  Blunt's  "  History,"  etc.  p.  240.  See  also  p.  54. 


86  The  English  Reformation. 

,_ — 1 

which  was  the  fountain  and  origin  of  so  many 
evils,  especially  of  those  which  affected  the 
constitution  of  the  Church,  namely  "  the  sec- 
ularized ecclesiastical  power  of  the  Pope." 

The  question  as  to  the  lawfulness  of  the 
King's  marriage  simply  brought  already  exist- 
ing anti-papal  influences  and  tendencies  to  a 
focus;  and  gave  the  occasion  for  turning  in- 
effective or  partially  effective  objections  and 
protests  into  effective  action.  But  this  was 
all  it  did.  It  was  not,  in  any  proper  sense 
of  the  term,  the  cause  of  the  Reformation. 

Nor  does  the  character  of  such  an  occasion 
determine,  or  even  affect,  the  character  of  a 
movement  to  which  it  furnishes  the  oppor- 
tunity for  action.  If  reasonable  and  sufficient 
causes  for  the  movement  exist,  if  it  is  directed 
by  those  causes  and  controlled  by  great  and 
true  principles  and  laws,  then  its  character 
is  to  be  judged  by  those  causes,  principles 
and  laws,  and  not  by  a  mere  incident  in  its 
progress.  We  note  the  incident,  indeed,  but 
then  we  leave  it.  It  may  be  very  paltry  or 
even  vile;  its  paltriness  or  vileness  leaves  no 


The  English  Reformation.  87 

stain  on  the  movement  into  the  real  life  of 
which  it  does  not  enter,  and  with  which  it 
has  no  necessary  or  inherent  connection.  Let 
the  question,  then,  as  to  the  King's  marriage 
be  as  paltry  or  vile  as  one  pleases,  let  there 
be  involved  in  it  what  you  will  of  "inordi- 
nate and  sinful  affections "  on  his  part,  and 
of  infinite  servility  and  cringing  on  the  part 
of  those  who  acted  with  him,  these  are  not 
the  things  by  which  we  estimate,  or  ought 
to  estimate,  the  character  of  the  English  Ref- 
ormation. That  character  must  be  determined 
simply  by  the  necessities  which  led  to  it, 
and  the  way  in  which  those  necessities  were 
met. 

It  ought  not,  however,  to  be  forgotten,  that 
the  two  great  underlying  questions  in  this 
matter  were  neither  paltry  nor  vile.  It  is 
customary  to  speak  of  Henry's  demand  for  a 
divorce  from  his  queen.  But  the  real  point 
at  issue  was,  not  whether  there  should  be  a 
divorce  of  parties  joined  in  an  undoubtedly 
lawful  marriage,  but  whether  the  marriage 
itself  was  not  unlawful  and  therefore  ipso 


88  The  English  Reformation. 

facto  null  and  void.  Henry  had  b.een  mar- 
ried, as  we  all  know,  to  his  brother  Arthur's 
widow  under  a  dispensation  from  Julius  II. 
The  question,  then,  as  to  the  lawfulness  of 
the  marriage,  clearly  brought  up  two  other 
questions,  on  the  answers  to  which  the  main 
answer  must  depend;  first,  Is  marriage  with 
a  brother's  widow  forbidden  by  the  law  of 
God  ?  and  -secondly,  If  it  is  forbidden,  can 
the  Pope  dispense  with  a  law  of  God  ?  I  only 
state  the  questions.  But  it  is  obvious  at  a 
glance  that  if  the  first  is  answered  in  the 
affirmative,  then  a  similar  answer  to  the  sec- 
ond involves  consequences  that  are  simply 
appalling. 

Nor  was  the  question  a  mere  afterthought. 
It  had  been  agitated  at  the  time  of  the  be- 
trothal, and  Warham,  Archbishop  of  Can- 
terbury, strongly  opposed  any  application  for 
a  dispensation  from  Rome.  There  were  also, 
even  then,  "murmurings  of  the  people"  against 
the  match.  Later  on,  the  King's  anxieties,  and 
possibly  superstitious  fears,  were  awakened  by  ^ 
the  failure  of  any  male  issue  and  the  sole 


The  English  Reformation.  89 

survivorship  of  the  Princess  Mary;  and  the 
realm  was  disturbed  by  the  dread  of  a  dis- 
puted succession  to  the  crown,  a  dread  in- 
tensified by  the  remembrances  of  the  wars 
of  the  roses.  Nor  may  it  be  forgotten  that 
in  1527  when  "  negotiations  were  in  progress 
with  reference  to  a  contemplated  marriage 
between  the  Princess  Mary  and  one  of  the 
two  sons  of  the  king  of  France,"  the  French 
envoy — then  a  bishop  and  afterwards  a  car- 
dinal— "raised  an  objection  against  it  that 
the  Pope  had  exceeded  his  powers  in  grant- 
ing a  dispensation  for  the  marriage  of  Henry 
to  Katharine,  for  that  such  a  union  was  for- 
bidden by  the  law  of  God,  not  by  the  law 
of  the  Church  only;  and  that,  therefore,  the 
marriage  was  not  in  fact  valid,  nor  the  Prin- 
cess Mary  a  lawful  daughter  of  the  King."9 

a  J.  H.  Blunt's  "History,"  etc.,  pp.  103,  114.  Froude's 
"Hist,  of  England,"  vol.  i.  pp.  114-117.  It  is  safe  to  say 
that  but  for  Katharine's  dower  and  the  avarice  of  Henry  VII. 
there  would  never  have  been  a  thought  of  the  marriage.  Canon 
Perry  ("Hist,  of  the  English  Church,"  p.  42),  asserts  that  during 
the  negotiations  of  1527  Mary's  legitimacy  was  not  questioned. 
On  the  other  hand,  Le  Grand,  the  French  historian  of  the  di- 


90  The  English  Reformation. 

j 

All  this  shews  that  there  were  matters  of 
the  most  serious  import  connected  with  the 
marriage  and  its  dissolution  which  ought  not 
to  be  set  aside  as  paltry  or  vile;  while,  at  the 
same  time,  it  must  be  freely  admitted,  that, 
at  last,  the  most  sinful  desires  actuated  the 
King,  and  that  he,  and  those  who  acted  with 
him,  adopted  methods  which  can  only  be  con- 
demned. These  are  undoubtedly  great  blots 
on  the  character  of  many  persons  more  or  less 
connected  with  the  Reformation,  but  they  have 
nothing  to  do  with  the  character  of  that  move- 
ment in  itself  considered.10 

vorce,  who  had  the  French  ambassador's  papers  as  authority, 
asserts  the  contrary.  This  would  seem  to  be  conclusive.  It 
would  not,  however,  be  right  to  say  as  Mr.  Froude  seems  to 
(vol.  i.  p.  114,  n.  I),  that  this  occasioned  the  earliest  intimation 
of  a  desire  on  the  King's  part  for  a  divorce.  The  idea  had  been 
entertained  as  early  as  1525  (Perry,  p.  41,  n.  2),  and  there  is 
quite  sufficient  evidence  that  Wolsey  had  wrought  upon  Henry, 
either  directly  or  by  the  agency  of •  his  confessor.  Perry,  p. 
42,  n.  2. 

10  Nothing  is  said  touching  the  action  of  Clement  VII.  because 
the  history  of  the  divorce  is  not  under  consideration.  I  may, 
however,  say  in  a  foot-note,  that  there  is  some  reason  to  believe 


The  English  Reformation.  91 

Indeed  it  may  be  said,  once  for  all,  that 
nothing  is  to  be  more  deprecated  than  the 
fashion  of  encumbering  historical  researches, 
and  at  the  same  time  making  their  results 
unreal  and  unreliable,  by  the  introduction  into 
them  of  questions  touching  individual  char- 
acter and  personal  motives.  That  good  men 
may,  under  the  influence  of  mistakes  to  which 
human  weakness  is  always  liable,  espouse  a 
bad  cause,  does  not  make  that  bad  cause 
good.  That  bad  men  may,  under  the  influ- 
ence of  evil  purposes  which  it  may  be  made 

that  the  Pope  "was  actually  induced  to  pronounce  the  marriage 
with  Katharine  invalid  (July  23,  1528);  though  his  dread  of  the 
Emperor  soon  afterwards  constrained  him  to  repudiate  the  bull; " 
and  that  he  did,  if  documents  may  be  relied  on,  say  to  the  Bishop 
of  Tarbes,  that  he  wished  the  King  would  marry  again  "either 
by  dispensation  of  the  English  Legate,  or  otherwise,  so  it  was  not 
by  his  authority,  thus  diminishing  his  power  as  to  dispensa- 
tions," etc.;  and  did  also,  in  1530,  offer  a  dispensation  for  Henry 
to  have  two  wives.  The  truth  is  that  Clement's  great  point  all 
along  was  to  guard,  not  the  purity  of  marriage,  but  the  papal 
power;  and  that  he  was  a  mere  puppet  in  the  hands  of  Charles  V. 
or  Francis  I.  as  the  case  might  be.  See  Hardwick's  "  Reforma- 
tion," p.  186,  n.  i;  Froude's  "History  of  England,"  vol.  i.  p. 
244,  n.  i;  p.  375,  n.  2. 


92  The  English  Reformation. 

, j 

to  serve,  espouse  a  good  cause,  cannot  make 
that  good  cause  bad.  Sol  non  inquinatur  a 
re  turpi.  Ananias,  Sapphira  and  Simon  Ma- 
gus did  not  make  the  Apostolic  Church  an  evil 
thing.  The  shortcomings  and  sins  of  individ- 
ual Christians  do  not  change  the  character  of 
Christianity.  And  if  the  vileness  and  infamies 
of  Alexander  VI.,  Julius  II.  and  Leo  X.  are  not 
to  weigh  against  the  claims  of  the  Roman 
Church,  why  should  more  of  weight  be  given 
to  the  alleged  ill  characters  of  some  of  the 
actors  in  our  English  Reformation  ?  Let  strict 
historic  justice  be  done  to  each  and  every  in- 
dividual; let  each  receive  his  own  due  meed 
of  praise,  or  bear  his  own  due  burden  of  re- 
proach. But  let  not  such  praise  or  reproach 
be  transferred  from  individuals  to  the  systems 
with  which  they  happen  to  be  connected,  ex- 
cept in  so  far  as  their  characters  are  the  direct 
results  and  embodiments  of  the  principles  and 
doctrines  which  those  systems  have  inculcated. 
Above  all  let  not  our  Reformed  Church  be  held 
responsible  for  characters  which  she  did  not 
shape,  but  which  are  the  outcome  of  a  train- 


The  English  Reformation.  93 

ing  and  instruction  widely  different  from  her 
own.1 

Meantime  we  may  take  comfort  in  believing 
that  obscurations  of  historic  truth  which  are 
caused  by  exaggerated  views  of  individual 
character,  are  likely  to  be  transitory  and  even 
ephemeral.  It  has  been  well  said  by  one  who 
had  a  right  to  say  it,  "The  libellous  Foxes  and 
Sanderses,  on  either  side,  of  the  time  itself, 
have  been  discredited  long  ago.  And  the 
equally  perverse  crotchetiness  of  some  modern 
partisans — whether  it  be  the  love  of  clever  par- 
adox which  whitewashes  Henry  VIII.  and  vili- 

1  As  an  instance  of  the  way  in  which  just  weights  and  measures 
fail  to  be  dealt  alike  to  all,  it  may  be  remembered  that  while, 
in  some  quarters,  any  conceivable  amount  of  obloquy  has  been 
poured  on  Cranmer  for  his  marriage,  no  notice  has  been  taken  of 
the  fact,  that  unless  Wolsey  and  Campeggio  were  married  they 
must  have  lived  in  concubinage;  for  the  former  had  a  son  and 
a  daughter,  and  a  son  of  the  latter  was  knighted  by  Henry  VIII. 
See  J.  H.  Blunt's  "History,"  etc.,  p.  97,  n.  4.  Still  it  must  be 
remembered  that  after  compulsory  celibacy  became  the  law  for 
the  clergy,  "lawful  marriage  was  often  concealed  under  the  veil 
of  concubinage,  the  less  disreputable  alternative  according  to  the 
ecclesiastical  public  opinion  of  the  age."  Pryce,  "Ancient 
British  Church,"  p.  205. 


94  The  English  Reformation. 

— l 

fies  the  Church,  or  the  equally  perverse  ex- 
travagance which  in  the  opposite  direction 
delights  to  blacken  Cranmer — are  mere  eccen- 
tricities that  will  make  no  mark."2 

I  turn  from  these  topics  which  have  en- 
grossed more  time  and  space  than  I  intended, 
but  which  must  have  been  considered  some- 
where, to  the  special  subject  of  this  lecture, 
the  abrogation  of  the  Papal  Jurisdiction  in 
England.  In  the  classification  of  the  neces- 
sary lines  of  reformation,  constitutional,  ritual 
and  doctrinal,  this  reform  stands  first.  And 
as  it  stands  first,  and  everywhere  presents 
itself,  so  it  also  lies  at  the  root  of  all  else; 
for  no  other  reforms  could  have  been  success- 
fully attempted  till  this  wrong  had  been  dealt 
with.  Wolsey's  failure,  for  in  spite  of  any 
partial  results  it  was  a  failure,  abundantly 
proves  this. 

On  what  law  then  of  the  Catholic  Church,  on 
what  venerable  prescription  carrying  a  power 
as  potent  as  canon  or  enactment,  on  what  con- 
sent of  the  realm  of  England  given  by  the  ec- 

2  Haddan,   "Remains,"  p.  369. 


The  English  Reformation.  95 

clesiastical  and  secular  powers,  did  the  papal 
jurisdiction  in  England  rest;  so  rest,  that 
it  might  not  be  disturbed  without  violating 
compacts  in  the  State  and  causing  a  schism 
in  the  Church  ?  These  are  the  questions  that 
meet  us  when  we  face  that  "  mysterious  shape 
of  sovereignty"  which  holds  in  one  hand  the 
sword  of  secular  power,  and  in  the  other 
the  rod  of  spiritual  dominion.  The  answer 
to  them  opens  before  us  a  range  of  time 
and  events  of  which  I  can  only  touch  the 
salient  points  in  attempting  to  gather  up  its 
testimony. 

It  is  not  till  the  fifth  century  that  the  Brit- 
ish Church  fairly  appears  as  the  Church  of  the 
nation.  There  was,  no  doubt,  a  Church  in 
Britain  before  that  period;  but  it  was  "scanty 
in  numbers  and  poor  in  wealth,"  and  it  "  ap- 
pears in  history  as  simply  following  the  lead 
of  the  Western  Church  in  general,  and  spe- 
cially of  the  Gallic."  Nor  is  it  identified  with 
the  nation  till  "a  short  time  before  the  Saxon 
invasion."3  Amid  all  the  uncertain  legends  and 

3  Haddan's  "Remains,"  pp.  232,  235. 


96  The  English  Reformation. 

\ : 

traditions  of  its  earlier  days,  and  all  the  his- 
tory of  its  later  period,  one  fact  stands  prom- 
inently out.  Its  testimony  is  negative  rather 
than  positive,  but  under  the  circumstances 
the  more  valuable  for  that  very  reason.  The 
Church  of  Britain  was  simply  ignorant  not 
merely  of  any  supremacy  of  the  Pope  as  of 
divine  right,  but  of  any  claim  on  his  part  as 
Patriarch  of  the  West.4  There  was  not  even 
that  deferential  affection  which  a  national 
Church  gives  back  to  another  to  which  it 
owes  its  origin.  Any  such  feeling  is  directed 
toward  the  Gallic  Church.  There  is  no  re- 
corded opposition,  because  there  was  nothing 
to  oppose.  There  was  no  protest,  because 
there  was  nothing  to  protest  against. 

Roman  writers  are  wont  to  make  much  of 
two  things  claimed  for  this  period;  first  the 

4  The  Roman  patriarchate  included  the  ten  provinces  placed 
civilly  under  the  Vicarius  urbis,  namely,  Italy,  south  of  the  Italic 
Diocese,  and  the  three  adjacent  islands.  Bingham,  B.  ix.  c.  i. 
Sec.  9.  ff.;  Palmer,  "Origines  Liturg,"  vol.  ii.  p.  260.  ff. ;  Bright's 
"Early  English  Church  History,"  p.  62,  n.  2;  Fulwood,  "Roma 
Ruit,"  c.  iv. 


The  English  Reformation.  97 

story  of  Lucius,  a  British  King,  and  Eleuth- 
erus,  Bishop  of  Rome  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  second  century;  and  secondly,  the  pres- 
ence of  British  bishops  at  the  Council  of  Sar- 
dica,  in  347. 

The  story  about  Lucius  is,  in  brief,  this. 
He,  being  King  of  Britain,  or  at  least  a  Brit- 
ish king,  sent  to  Eleutherus,  Bishop  of  Rome, 
(A.  D.  174-186?),  asking  that  he  might  "by  his 
commission  be  made  a  Christian;"  and,  that 
missionaries  were  thereupon  sent  to  Britain, 
whose  mission  ended  in  the  conversion  of  the 
British  nation,  and  brought  its  Church  under 
the  papal  rule. 

The  germ  of  this  tale  first  appears  in  the 
Catalogus  Pontificum,  in  what  may  be  called 
its  second  edition,  which  comes  down  to  527. 
It  merely  mentions  a  letter  from  Lucius;  this 
being  the  first  notice  of  it  after  more  than  three 
centuries  from  its  asserted  date.  As  time  went 
on  the  story  was  variously  enlarged,  and 
Adorned  with  circumstances.  Bede  took  it 
from  the  Catalogus  and  introduced  it  into 
England.  Then,  more  than  three  hundred 


98  The  English  Reformation. 

years  after  Bede's  death,  a  letter  from  El- 
eutherus  to  Lucius  appears  "of  all  the  odd 
places  in  the  world,  in  a  sort  of  appendix  to 
the  Laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor."  Were 
this  letter  genuine  it  would  make  strongly 
against  the  legend.  For  in  it  Lucius  is 
mentioned  as  demanding  not  the  Christian 
religion,  but  the  Roman  civil  law;  and  the 
Pope  refers  him  to  the  Scriptures  as  the  place 
where  he  can  find  sufficing  laws,  and  that  on 
the  ground  that  Lucius  is  "  God's  sole  vice- 
gerent" and  "  vicar"  in  his  own  kingdom.  But 
the  letter  is  only  a  clumsy  forgery, — unless  in- 
deed Eleutherus  was  endowed  with  so  won- 
derful a  prophetic  gift  as  to  be  able  to  quote 
prophetically  a*  work  not  extant  in  his  day. 
For  "  the  translations  of  Holy  Scripture 
found  in  the  letter  are  translations  made  by 
Jerome,  who  did  not  exist  till  nearly  two 
centuries  after  the  Pope  who  is  said  to  have 
written  the  letter."  We  may  safely  dismiss 
the  story  with  the  caustic  remark  of  an  old 
writer,  that  it  resembles  the  dry  and  mouldly 
bread  of  the  Gibeonites  which  was  baked 


The  English  Reformation.  99 

in  ovens  nearer  home  than  the  Israelites 
imagined.6 

It  is  also  claimed  that  British  bishops  hav- 
ing been  present  at  the  Council  of  Sardica, 
in  347,  and  having  joined  in  enacting  its  can- 
ons, the  British  Church  was  thereby  brought 
under  the  appellate  jurisdiction  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rome.  "In  the  third  canon''  of  that  coun- 
cil "it  is  said,  that  'if  any  bishop  thought  he 
had  good  reason'  to  appeal  from  a  provincial 
judgment  of  his  case,  and  to  desire  a  new 
trial,  he  should  write  to  Julius,  Bishop  of 
Rome;"  and  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  if  he  thought 
fit,  might  name  new  judges,  or  he  might  order 
the  case  to  be  tried  again  by  the  provincial 
bishops,  or  send  presbyters  from  his  side  (aito 
TOV  idiov  itXevpov,  legates),  to  .try  it.6 

Now   without   questioning   the   presence   of 

s  Haddan's  "Remains,"  p.  227;  Bright's  "Early  Eng.  Ch.," 
p.  3;  Bennett,  "Church's  Broken  Unity,"  Romanism,  i.  p.  17.  ff. 
The  latest  version  of  the  story  which  I  have  seen  is  in  the  Abbe 
Darras'  "Hist.  Gen.  de  V  Eglise,"  vol.  i.  p.  137.  He  tells  the 
tale  as  calmly  as  if  it  were  indubitably  true. 

6  Hussey,  "Rise  of  the  Papal  Power,"  p.  4. 


IOO  The  English  Reformation. 

; \ 

British    bishops 7    or    the    genuineness  ,  of   the 

canons,  or  pressing  the  point,  urged  by  Galli- 
can  divines,  that  this  appellate  power  was 
given  only  personally  to  Julius,  and  did  not 
pass  to  his  successors,  there  are  still  several 
things  to  be  carefully  noted. 

It  is  obvious,  to  begin  with,  that  new  pow- 
ers are  conferred  by  the  canons  instead  of 
ancient  or  existing  ones  being  recognized.8 
There  is  no  reference  as  at  Nice  to  the  "  an- 
cient customs,"  or  at  Constantinople  to  pre- 
vious canons,  or  at  Ephesus  to  the  Canons 
of  the  holy  Fathers.  The  legislation  does 

7  It  is  doubtful  if  they  were  present,  or  had  any  other  con- 
nection with  the  Council  than  to  accept  its  vindication  of  Ath- 
anasius.     The    letter    of   the    Council    makes    no    mention    of 
Britain. 

8  De  Marca  says,  "  The  words  of  the  Canon  prove  that  the  in- 
stitution of  this  right  was  new.     If.it  please  you,  says  Hosius 
Bishop  of  Cordova,  who  presided  over  the  Council,  let  us  honor 
the  memory  of  the  Apostle  Peter.     He  says  not  that  the  ancient 
tradition  was  to  be  confirmed,  as  was  wont  to  be  done  in  mat- 
ters which  only  require  the  renewal  or  explanation  of  an  ancient 
right."     Quoted  by  Allies,  "Church  of  England  cleared  from  the 
Sin  of  Schism,"  p.  76.     See  also  Innet's  "  Origines  Anglicance^ 
pp.  182-186. 


The  English  Reformation.  101 

not  recognize  an  existing  power,  it  creates 
a  new  one.  Its  testimony  therefore  is  fatal 
to  any  prescriptive  jurisdiction  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rome. 

But  what  is  the  power  created  ?  One  which 
depended  entirely  on  the  action  of  others,  and 
gave  the  Bishop  of  Rome  no  authority  to  orig- 
inate action  for  himself.  If  a  bishop  consid- 
ered himself  wronged  by  his  comprovincials 
he  might  appeal  to  Rome,  but  the  Roman 
bishop  had  no  permission  to  act  till  his  ac- 
tion was  invoked,  and  there  was  not  given 
him  authority  "  to  evoke  causes  to  Rome, 
nor  to  summon  bishops  ex-officio,  nor  to  pro- 
ceed to  review  and  set  aside  the  judgments 
of  Councils."9  Nor  was  appeal  allowed  in  any 
and  -all  cases,  but  only  in  one,  "  namely,  when 
a  bishop  was  deposed  by  his  comprovincials."10 
All  this  confers  no  patriarchal  power,  and 
brings  no  church  which  was  not  a  part  of 
the  Roman  patriarchate — as  the  British  Church 
assuredly  was  not — under  the  patriarchal  ju- 

»  Hussey,  p.  5. 

w  Hefele,  "  Hist,  of  Church  Councils,"  vol.  ii.  p.  125. 


IO2  The  English  Reformation. 

risdiction  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome.  There  is, 
in  point  of  fact,  no  record  of  any  appeal  to 
Rome  in  the  history  of  the  British  Church. 
The  first  instance  of  it  is  found  in  Wilfred's 
first  appeal  in  678. 

Moreover,  the  Council  of  Sardica  is  only  a 
provincial  council  at  the  utmost,  and  its  de- 
crees are  therefore  open  to  review  and  re- 
versal by  a  General  Council.  Such  review 
and  reversal  were  made  by  the  second  Gen- 
eral Council,  that  of  Constantinople  in  381, 
which  orders  that  "  in  each  ecclesiastical  prov- 
ince the  Provincial  Synod  shall  govern,"1  by 
which  provision,  as  even  Hefele  admits,  "  the 
appeal  to  Rome  was  excluded."2 

There  is,  then,  no  evidence  that  the  Pa- 
pacy acquired  any  jurisdiction  over  the  Brit- 
ish Church  either  by  the  conversion  of  the 


1  Canon  II.     Compare  also  Can.  XIX.  of  Chalcedon. 

2  "  History  of  Church  Councils,'*  vol.  ii.  356.     On  the  whole 
subject,   see   Hussey,   ut  sup.,   pp.    1-12;    Hefele,   vol.  ii.   pp. 
112-129;  Fulwood,    c.   xix.,    §   xi.;   Bramhall,    "Works,"  Fol. 
1677,  p.  267;  Guettee,  "The  Papacy,"  Am.  Ed.  pp.  124-128; 
Pryce,  "Ancient  British  Church,"  pp.  97-99. 


The  English  Reformation.  103 

nation  or  by  ecclesiastical  enactment;  while 
the  circumstances  of  Augustine's  interviews 
with  the  British  bishops  not  only  shew  that 
no  such  jurisdiction  had  been  acquired  by 
prescription,  by  unwritten  usage  and  accepted 
act,  but  also  that  there  had  been  no  connec- 
tion of  any  sort  with  the  See  of  Rome. 

I  have  dwelt  the  longer  on  this  matter  for 
a  reason  which  will  presently  appear  in  con- 
nection with  the  question,  often  asked,  grant- 
ing all  that  has  been  said,  did  not  the  Bishop 
of  Rome  acquire  jurisdiction  in  England  by 
the  mission  of  Augustine,  in  597,  and  its  re- 
sults ?  The  answer  is  perfectly  plain  on  every 
principle  of  ecclesiastical  law.  There  was  a 
church  in  England  when  Augustine  came 
thither.  It  had  been  in  fact,  it  was  then  in 
right,  the  national  Church  of  the  land.  Trod- 
den down  it  may  have  been  by  the  heathen, 
pushed  into  the  corners  and  by-places  of  the 
land,  if  you  will  into  "  dens  and  caves  of 
the  earth,"  yet  still  the  Church  of  Britain 
with  its  canonical  rights  and  immunities,  pro- 
tected in  them  by  that  great  canon  of  the 


IO4  The  English  Reformation. 

; j 

Council  of  Ephesus,  in  431,  which  covers  with 
the  shield  of  law  our  Anglican  position,  and 
stamps  the  papal  claims  on  England  as  illegal 
and  a  usurpation.  These  are  the  words  of 
the  Canon:  "  None  of  the  most  religious  bish- 
ops shall  invade  any  other  province,  which 
has  not  heretofore  from  the  beginning  been 
under  the  hand  of  himself  or  his  predeces- 
sors. But  if  any  one  has  so  invaded  a  prov- 
ince and  brought  it  by  force  under  himself, 
he  shall  restore  it,  that  the  canons  of  the 
Fathers  may  not  be  transgressed,  nor  the 
pride  of  secular  dominion  be  privily  intro- 
duced under  the  appearance  of  a  sacred  of- 
fice, nor  we  lose,  little  by  little,  the  freedom 
which  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  deliverer 
of  all  men,  has  given  us  by  His  own  blood."3 

3  Canon  VIII.  Each  metropolitan  was  allowed  "  to  take  a 
copy  of  the  things  transacted  for  his  own  security."  The  Canon, 
it  will  be  observed,  accords  with  Canons  XIV.  and  XV.  of  the 
Council  of  Antioch,  in  341,  and  not  with  that  of  Sardica  in  347. 
Antioch  was  one  of  the  five  local  councils,  the  canons  of  which, 
collected  into  one  code,  were  accepted  by  the  Council  of  Chal- 
cedon,  and  stamped  with  the  authority  of  that,  the  fourth,  Gen- 
eral Council. 


The  English  Reformation.  105 

On  this  canon,  therefore,  we  take  our  stand. 
It  justifies  every  resistance  to  the  usurpations 
of  the  papacy  from  the  action  in  the  case  of 
Wilfred  in  678  to  the  final  rejection  of  the  pa- 
pacy in  1534.  And  more  than  this,  it  contains 
a  prophetic  foreshadowing  of  the  way  in  which 
"little  by  little  .  .  .  the  pride  of  secular  domin- 
ion" was  "  privily  introduced  under  the  appear- 
ance of  a  sacred  office,"  and  so  national  church- 
es lost  the  freedom  which  Christ  had  given 
them  and  became  subject  to  papal  bondage. 

It  is,  then,  nothing  to  the  purpose  to  say 
that  Gregory  I.  wrote  to  Augustine  *  that  he 
committed  all  the  British  bishops  to  his  au- 
thority. This  was  just  what  he  could  not 
lawfully  do,  what  the  British  bishops  had  an 
entire  right  under  the  Ephesine  canon  to  re- 
sist, and  what  they  did  resist.  Nor  can  we 
believe  that  Gregory,  who  had  stigmatized  the 
title  of  universal  bishop,  and  the  claims  it  car- 
ries with  it,  as  "proud,  rash,  foolish,  wicked, 
blasphemous,  and  anti-Christian,"5  could  have 

4  Ep.  xi.  64. 

5  Bright,  "Early  Eng.  Church,"  p.  62,  n.  3  and  references. . 


io6  The  English   Reformation. 

I 

undertaken  to  act  on  the  ground  of  the  uni- 
versal jurisdiction  of  the  Roman  bishop.  In 
all  probability  British  bishops  were  scarcely 
in  Gregory's  thoughts  at  all.  So  entire  had 
been  the  separation  of  the  churches  that  to 
him  they  were  little  more  than  shadowy 
phantoms,  to  be  disposed  of  as  easily  as 
might  be. 

It  may  still  be  said,  notwithstanding  the 
Ephesine  canon,  was  not  some  jurisdiction  over 
England  gained  somehow  through  the  con- 
version of  England  by  Augustine  ?  Some  and 
somehow  are  rather  vague  terms,  but  a  neg- 
ative general  will,  I  suppose,  cover  them. 
Among  all  the  romances  of  history  there  is 
scarcely  one  that  is  greater  than  the  attribu- 
tion of  the  conversion  of  England  to  the  labors 
of  Augustine  and  his  companions,  or  to  the 
mission  from  Rome  in  any  way.  I  content 
myself  with  simply  quoting  the  well  weighed 
and  true  words  of  Mr.  Haddan:  "  If  Augustine 
is  to  be  the  Hengist  of  the  Christian  conquest, 
his  merits  must  be  reduced  to  the  proportions 
assigned  by  later  philosophical  historians  to 


The  English  Reformation.  107 

his  secular  prototype;  and  the  Christianizing 
as  the  Teutonizing  of  the  island  beyond-  the 
narrow  limits  of  Kent  must  be  assigned  to 
others."  To  these  may  be  added  the  equally 
true  words  of  Mr.  Bennett:  "  For  one  hundred 
years  or  nearly  so  after  the  arrival  of  St.  Au- 
gustine, not  a  single  county  north  of  the 
Thames,  except  perhaps  Norfolk  and  Suffolk 
had  received  Christianity  through  the  instru- 
mentality of  Rome;"  all  the  rest  of  Eng- 
land was  converted  by  the  labors  "of  the 
Irish  Scots;  a  Church  altogether  repudiat- 
ing Roman  interference,  denying  Roman  ju- 
risdiction, and  upholding  an  Apostolic  suc- 
cession."6 

I  do  not  for  a  moment  mean  to  say  that 
any  conversion  of  a  heathen  people  or  any 
aid  extended  to  an  oppressed  and  suffering 
Church,  or  to  an  oppressed  and  suffering  mi- 
nority in  any  Church  striving  to  maintain  or 
to  recover  the  Catholic  Faith  or  Order  in  the 
face  of  heresy  at  home  or  usurpation  from 
abroad,  can  give  the  Church  that  converts 

6  Haddan,  ut  sup.,  pp.  316,  317.    Bennett,  ut  sup.,  pp.  104,  105. 


io8  The  English  Reformation. 

i— 

or  aids  lawful  jurisdiction  over   the  nation  it 

converts  or  the  body  it  assists.  In  the  one 
case,  as  appears  over  and  over  again  in  the 
early  conversions  of  peoples  and  nations,  a 
national  and  autonomous  Church  is  founded. 
In  the  other,  as  is  shewn  by  abundant  illus- 
trations in  the  history  of  Arianism,  no  juris- 
diction is  acquired  from  the  outside,  there  is 
only  reintegration  and  restoration  within;  in 
some  instances,  deliverance  from  an  obtruded 
and  really  foreign  episcopate. 

There  being,  therefore,  no  jurisdiction  of 
Rome  over  England  acquired  by  prescription 
of  patriarchal  right,  by  conversion  of  heathen 
peoples,  or  by  aid,  if  there  was  any,  afforded 
to  the  ancient  national  Church  of  the  country; 
and  such  jurisdiction  being  made  illegal  and 
void  (unless  held  from  the  beginning),  by  the 
Ephesine  canon,  it  becomes  a  usurpation  to 
be  resisted  and  rejected.  That  such  resistance 
was  long  in  becoming  rejection  only  shews 
how  strong  were  the  circumstances, — the  force, 
or  the  fraud, — that  were  to  be  conquered. 
That  rejection  came  at  last,  only  proves  that 


The  English  Reformation.  109 

in  this,  as  in  many  other  cases,  right  was  slow 
in  overcoming  wrong. 

And  yet  there  was  continuous  resistance. 
It  is  enough  here  to  mention  the  case  of 
Wilfred  closed  in  706,  the  laws  of  Edward 
the  Confessor,  the  various  quarrels  with  Rome 
touching  exemptions  from  episcopal  jurisdic- 
tion, the  Constitutions  of  Clarendon  in  1164, 
the  resistance  to  Otho  the  papal  legate  in 
1237,  ^e  parliamentary  refusal  of  tribute 
in  1365,  and  the  enactments  against  papal 
provisions  in  England  by  statutes  of  Edward 
I.,  Edward  III.,  Richard  II.,  and  Henry  V. 
I  name  these  simply  as  instances  illustrating 
and  proving  the  statement  already  quoted 
"that  the  Crown  and  Church  of  England 
with  a  steady  opposition,  resisted  the  en-, 
trance  and  encroachment  of  the  secularized 
ecclesiastical  po.wer  of  the  Pope  in  England."7 

We  have  reached,  at  last,  the  reign  of  Henry 

7  See  Bramhall's  "Just  Vindication  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, "  and  his  Reply  to  the  Bishop  of  Chalcedon;  Hart's 
*'Eccl.  Records,"  c.  ii.;  Stephens's  "English  Constitution," 
vol.  i.  pp.  178-207. 


no  The  English  Reformation. 

VIII.,  and  are  to  consider  the  steps  by  which 
the  final  rejection  of  the  papal  power  was 
effected.  In  the  earlier  part  of  his  reign, 
Henry  was  the  devoted  adherent  of  the  Pa- 
pacy, and  for  his  devotion,  as  exhibited  in  his 
work  against  Luther,  received  from  Leo  X., 
the  title  of  "  Defender  of  the  Faith."  How 
thorough  his  devotion  was  appears  from  the 
testimony  of  Sir  Thomas  More.  More  had 
ventured  to  give  the  King  his  opinion  that 
the  Pope's  authority  had  been  pushed  too  far 
in  the  treatise  against  Luther,  and  had  re- 
minded him  of  the  statute  of  Richard  II.  The 
King  replied,  "We  and  all  Christians  are  so 
much  bound  to  the  See  of  Rome  that  we  can- 
not do  it  too  much  honor Whatsoever 

impediment  be  to  the  contrary,  we  will  set 
forth,  for  our  parts,  his  authority  to  the  ut- 
most as  it  deserved;  for  from  that  See  we  first 
received  our  faith  and  after  our  imperial  crown 
and  sceptre;  which,"  More  adds,  "till  his  grace 
with  his  own  mouth  told  me,  I  never  heard  of 
before." 8  But  this  devotion  of  the  King  was 

8  Wordsworth,  "Ecclesiastical  Biography,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  169. 


The  English  Reformation.  in 

by  no  means  shared  in  by  other  powerful  per- 
sons or  by  the  body  of  the  clergy  and  people. 
What  More  thought  we  have  just  seen.  Wol- 
sey's  administration  was  far  from  favorable  to  the 
papal  power.  As  has  been  said  before,  there 
are  complaints  from  Rome  at  hearing  nothing 
from  England;  sharp  letters  go  to  the  Pope; 
money  payments  are  withheld;  indulgences 
cannot  be  sold  in  the  realm  without  royal  li- 
cense; the  tenth  is  refused;  and  altogether  the 
relations  of  Rome  and  England  are  greatly 
disturbed.  "The  jurisdiction  of  the  papal  see 
over  the  Church  of  England  was  already  rot- 
ting away  before  Henry  VIII.  laid  the  axe  to 
its  roots;  and  it  was  its  moral  rottenness  which 
made  its  destruction  so  comparatively  easy." 9 

No  direct  step  was  taken  till  more  than  a 
year  after  the  avocation  of  the  divorce  case  to 
Rome,  an  act  which  was  nothing  less  than  an 
"  outrageous  provocation  offered  to  an  inde- 
pendent sovereign  " 10  and  to  the  entire  realm. 
Nor  was  that  step  a  violent  one.  In  Septem- 

9  Blunt,  "Reformation,"  p.  245. 
1°  Ibid.  p.  247. 


112  The  English  Reformation. 

; 1 

ber,  1530,  the  King  issued  a  proclamation,  ex- 
pressed substantially  in  the  words  of  the  law 
of  Richard  II.,  forbidding  the  admission  into 
the  kingdom  of  bulls  from  Rome.  Had 
Henry  listened  to  More  ten  years  earlier,  he 
might  have  been  saved  the  mortification  of 
eating  his  own  words.  The  proclamation, 
however,  neither  asserted  nor  claimed  any  new 
power.  It  simply  brought  into  action  an  ex- 
isting law,  passed  in  1393;  violations  of  which 
had  been  connived  at,  indeed,  but  had  never 
been  lawful.  It  looked  back  over  a  long  past 
and  also  foreshadowed  a  rapidly  approaching 
end. 

The  next  step,  and  it  deserves  careful  con- 
sideration, was  taken  by  Convocation  in  1531, 
in  a  petition  to  the  Crown.1  This  petition  set 
forth  the  hardships  and  vexations  which  the 
bishops  experienced  in  being  compelled  to 
pay,  as  the  price  of  the  bulls  for  consecration, 
"the  annates,  that  is  to  say,  the  first  fruits 

1  The  original  document  is  in  the  British  Museum.  Blunt 
gives  it  at  length,  "Reformation,"  p.  250,  ff.  See  also  Dixon's 
"  History  of  the  Church  of  England,"  etc.  vol.  i.  p.  113,  ff. 


The  English  Reformation.  113 

of  their  bishoprics."2  It  then  asserts  that  the 
annates  "  as  touching  the  temporalities  be- 
longeth  of  right  to  the  King's  Grace,  and  as 
touching  the  spirituality  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury."  It  sets  forth  the  temporal  alle- 
giance of  bishops  to  the  Crown,  and  asks  for 
the  abolition  of  the  exaction.  The  pith  of  the 
document  is  in  its  close,  in  which  the  King  is 
requested,  in  case  the  Pope  should  "  make  any 
process  for  retaining  these  annates,"  or  with- 
hold the  bishops'  bulls  till  they  are  paid,  "  to 
ordain,  in  this  present  parliament,  that  then 
the  obedience  of  him  and  the  people  be  with- 
drawn from  the  See  of  Rome"  as  the  King  of 
France  had  formerly  withdrawn  his  obedience 
and  that  of  his  subjects  from  Benedict  XIII. 

2  First  fruits,  were,  in  their  beginning,  a  simoniacal  contrivance 
by  which  foreigners  appointed  by  the  Pope  to  benefices  in  Eng- 
land paid  him  the  first  year's  rent  of  the  benefice,  under  pretext 
of  carrying  on  the  wars  for  regaining  the  Holy  Land.  But  at  last 
they  were  extended  to  all  persons  appointed  by  the  King  or  his 
temporal  subjects.  How  great  this  burden  had  become,  and  how 
it  drained  the  kingdom,  may  be  seen  from  the  estimate  that,  from 
1486,  ^£45,000  or  $225,000  of  our  money  had  annually  gone  in 
this  way. 


114  The  English   Reformation. 

In  accordance  with  this  suggestion  Parliament 
passed  an  act3  ordaining  that  "all  payments 
of  first  fruits  to  the  court  of  Rome  should  be 
put  down  and  forever  restrained."  Unwilling, 
however,  to  go  to  extremities,  it  left  the  final 
ordering  of  the  statute  to  the  King,  who  put 
it  in  force  by  letters  patent  in  1533.* 

Following  on  this  beginning  came,  in  1532-3, 
the  prohibition  of  Appeals  to  Rome.  I  have  al- 
ready spoken  of  this  matter,  as  it  was  alleged 
to  affect  the  early  English  Church,  and  shewn 
that  appeals  had  no  place  in  that  Church's 
polity.  Nor,  indeed,  did  they  become  at  all 

3  23  Hen.  VIII.  c.  xxxiii.     See  Stephen's  "Eng.  Constitution," 
vol.  i.  p.  185. 

4  Henry,  instead  of  restoring  the  first  fruits  to  the  Church  vested 
them  in  the  Crown.     So  they  continued  till  1704,  when,  at  the 
instance  of  Queen  Anne  and  to  carry  out  her  generous  offer  of  re- 
linquishing them,  Parliament  passed  a  bill  vesting  them  in  trustees 
for  the  augmentation  of  poorer  livings.     This  trust  is  known  as 
"Queen  Anne's  Bounty.'*     Burnet,  with  his  usual  fussy  and  con- 
ceited self-complacency,  takes  the  credit  of  the  transaction  to  him- 
self.    "  The  Queen  was  pleased  to  let  it  be  known  that  the  first 
motion  of  this  matter  came  from  Me."     Palin,  "  Hist,  of  Ch.  of 
Eng.,"  etc.  p.  253,  ff. 


The  English  Reformation.  115 

an  established  usage  till  after  the  reign  of 
Henry  II.5  There  was  no  warrant  for  them 
in  the  ancient  law  of  the  Church,  rather  that 
law  entirely  condemned  them;  and  they  in- 
volved delays,  exactions  and  abuses  that  were 
simply  intolerable. 

The  preamble  of  the  "Act  for  Restraining 
Appeals,"  is  so  remarkable,  and  so  distinctly 
illustrates  some  of  the  grounds  and  principles 
of  the  English  Reformation,  that  I  shall  ven- 
ture to  give  it  nearly  entire. 

"Whereas,  by  divers  sundry  old  authentic 
histories  and  chronicles,  it  is  manifestly  de- 
clared and  expressed  that  this  realm  of  Eng- 
land is  an  empire,  and  so  hath  been  accepted 
in  the  world,  governed  by  one  supreme  head 
and  King,  having  the  dignity  and  royal  estate 
of  the  imperial  crown  of  the  same;  unto  whom 
a  body  politic,  compact  of  all  sorts  and  degrees 
of  people,  divided  in  terms  and  by  names  of 
spiritualty  and  temporalty,  be  bound  and 
ought  to  bear,  next  to  God,  a  natural  and 
humble  obedience ;  he  being  also  institute 
5  Gibson's  "Codex,"  Tit.  III.  c.  Hi.  n.  g. 


n6  The  English  Reformation. 

and  furnished  ....  with  plenary  .  .  .  '.  power .  .  . 
to  render  and  yield  justice  and  final  determina- 
tion to  all  manner  of  folk,  residents  or  subjects 
within  this  his  realm;  ....  the  body  spiritual 
whereof  having  power  when  any  cause  of  the 
law  divine  happened  to  come  in  question  .  .  . •  f 
and  the  law  temporal  for  trial  of  property  of 
lands  and  goods,  and  for  the  conservation  of 
the  people  of  this  realm  in  unity  and  peace  .  .  . 
was  and  is  yet  administered  ....  by  sundry 
judges  and  ministers  of  the  other  part  of  the 
body  politic  called  the  temporalty."  After 
this  striking  preamble,  the  Act  appeals  to  the 
ancient  laws  of  the  realm,  recites  some  of  the 
many  grievances  of  appeals  to  Rome,  abolishes 
such  appeals,  and  provides  that  appeals  shall 
lie  from  the  archdeacon's  court  to  the  bishop's, 
and  from  the  bishop's  to  the  archbishop's, 
where  final  judgment  shall  be  given.6 

6  In  cases  affecting  the  Crown  the  appeal  lay  to  the  Upper 
House  of  Convocation.  24  Hen.  VIII.  c.  12,  Gibson's  "Codex," 
Title  III.  c.  Hi.  "The  Act  for  Submission  of  the  Clergy"  (25 
Hen.  VIII.  c.  xix),  made  no  exception  as  to  causes  touching  the 
Crown,  but  allowed,  "  for  all  manner  of  causes,"  a  final  appeal 


The  English  Reformation.  117 

This  enactment  cut  the  tap-root  of  papal 
jurisdiction  in  England,  nor,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  brief  reign  of  Mary,  has  that  juris- 
diction ever  been  revived. 

I  pass  by  here,  merely  mentioning  it,  the 
Act  of  IS33,7  abolishing  the  papal  power  in 
the  appointment  of  bishops  (because  its  pro- 

to  "the  King  in  Chancery,"  who,  thereupon,  appointed,  under 
the  great  seal,  a  Court  of  Delegates  to  determine  the  appeal. 
Even  after  this,  the  King  in  Council  could  appoint  a  Commission 
of  Review.  This  arrangement  continued  till  the  reign  of  William 
IV.  Then,  by  Statute  2  and  3  of  William  IV.,  the  Court  of  Del- 
egates was  abolished,  and  the  King  in  Council  was  to  exercise  all 
the  powers  of  that  Court;  and,  also,  by  statute  of  3  and  4  of  Wil- 
liam IV.,  "  the  Crown  was  empowered  to  remit  the  hearing  of  ec- 
clesiastical appeals  to  the  Judicial  Committee  of  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil, who  were  to  report  then:  opinion  thereon  to  the  King  in 
Council."  What  is  called  Lord  Penzance's  Court  has,  as  all 
know,  come  recently  into  existence,  and  its  Judge  is  put  in  place 
of  the  old  Official  Principals  of  the  Provincial  Courts  of  the  South- 
ern and  Northern  Provinces. 

It  is  curious,  and  worth  while,  to  compare  the  statements  of 
Bishop  Gibson,  "Codex,"  Int.  p.  xxi,  with  those  of  Dr.  Pusey, 
"Royal  Supremacy,"  p.  202,  and  of  Mr.  Fremantle,  "Eccl. 
Judg.  of  Privy  Council,"  Introduction.  They  are  condensed  in 
Brooke's  "Six  Judgments,"  etc.  Int.  p.  38  f. 

7  25  Henry  VIII.  c.  20. 


Ii8  The  English  Reformation. 

visions  will  be  better  treated  of  in  connection 
with  the  Royal  Supremacy),  and  proceed  to 
those  enactments  by  which  spiritual  jurisdic- 
tion was  transferred  from  the.  Pope  to  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  These  acts  were 
passed,8  in  1533-4  and  1536,  but  as  the  last 
was  only  a  sort  of  " healing  act"  to  cover  the 
case  of  ecclesiastics  who  held  office  from  Rome, 
the  first  alone  is  important  in  our  present  re- 
view. Its  title  is  an  "  Act  Concerning  Peter's 
Pence  and  Dispensations."  Peter's  Pence  were 
a  gift  made  on  occasion  of  a  visit  to  Rome 
about  793  by  Offa,  King  of  Mercia,  for  the 
maintenance  of  an  English  school  at  Rome 
"for  the  instruction  of  illiterate  Englishmen 
who  should  travel  thither."9  Money  payments 
to  Rome  are,  however,  apt  to  continue,  what- 
ever may  become  of  the  purpose  for  which 
they  are  given.  The  payment  went  on  till 

8  25  Henry  VIII.  c.  21 ;  and  28  Henry  VIII.  c.  16;  Gibsons* 
"Codex."  Tit.  iii.  c.  v. 

9  Canon  Robertson,  "History  of  the  Church,"  vol.  iii.  p.  181, 
dissents  from  this  view.     But  see  Dixon's  "  Church  of  England," 
vol.  i.  p.  1 86,  first  note. 


The  English  Reformation.  119 

by  this  Act  it  was  swept  away,  and  with  it 
the  last  shred  of  papal  exaction  in  England. 
The  important  part  of  the  Act  is  found  in 
its  earlier  portion,  and  in  the  three  following 
provisions;  that  neither  sovereign  nor  subjects 
shall  sue  to  the  Pope,  or  any  of  his  deputies, 
for  "any  Instruments  or  Writings  of  what 
name,  kind,  nature  or  quality  soever  they  be 
of,jror  for  any  cause;  that  all  such  Dispensa- 
tions, etc.,  "shall  be  henceforth  granted  to  the 
sovereign  and  his  subjects  by  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury,  only  that  in  case  of  Dispensa- 
tions" of  a  novel  kind  "a  license  from  the 
King  or  Council  shall  be  required;  and  that 
all  such  Dispensations,  etc.,  shall  be  held  good 
and  valid."  The  Act  further  declared  that  it 
embodied  "much  the  old  ancient  customs  of 
this  realm;"  and,  most  important  of  all,  that 
it  should  not  be  so  "interpreted  and  expounded 
as  if  the  King  his  nobles  and  subjects  did  in- 
tend by  the  same  to  decline  or  vary  from  the 
Congregation  of  Christ's  Church  in  any  things 
concerning  the  very  articles  of  the  Catholic 
Faith  of  Christendom,  or  in  any  other  things 


I2O  The  English  Reformation. 

declared  by  Holy  Scripture  and  the  Word  of 
God."10 

With  this  solemn  declaration  the  series  of 
parliamentary  enactments  touching  the  usurped 
papal  jurisdiction  is  concluded.  Those  portions 
of  it  which  it  had  usurped  from  the  civil  power 
were  restored  to  that  power;  those  which  it  had 
taken  to  itself  from  the  National  Church  were 
restored  to  the  authorities  of  that  Church;  and 
whatever  else  there  was  came  to  an  end. 

Side  by  side  with  the  course  of  legislation 

10  We  meet  here  the  word  Congregation.  Later  on  Romanists 
made  the  use  of  this  word  the  occasion  of  an  attack  on  English 
Versions  of  the  Scriptures.  Field,  "Of  the  Church,"  book  i.  c. 
v.,  at  the  end,  thus  meets  the  attack:  "The  reason  why  our 
translators,  in  the  beginning,  did  choose  rather  to  use  the  word 
Congregation  than  Church,  was  not,  as  the  adversary  maliciously 
imagineth,  for  that  they  feared  the  very  name  of  the  Church;  but 
because,  as  by  the  name  of  religion  and  religious  men,  ordinarily 
in  former  times  men  understood  nothing  but  the  professions  of 
monks  and  friars;  so  all  the  ordinary  sort,  when  they  heard  the 
name  of  the  Church,  understood  nothing  else  thereby  but  either 
the  material  place  where  men  met  to  worship  God,  or  the  clergy ', 
jurisdictions  and  temporalities  belonging  to  them.  .  .  .  When  this 
error  in  the  conceit  and  apprehension  of  men  was  removed,  the 
former  name  of  Church  was  more  ordinarily  used  again." 


The  English  Reformation.  121 

which  has  been  briefly  sketched,  there  appears 
a  series  of  enactments,  touching  the  Sovereign 
and  the  State  in  their  connection  with  the 
Church,  which  I  have  purposely  reserved  for 
separate  treatment;  believing  that  by  so  do- 
ing the  two  topics,  Papal  Jurisdiction  and  Roy- 
al Supremacy,  might  be  presented  with  greater 
distinctness.  One  thing,  however,  must  be  spo- 
ken of  before  I  sum  up  the  principles  proclaimed 
and  the  results  attained  in  these  enactments. 

It  could  not  but  happen  that,  in  the  years 
during  which  these  things  were  engrossing  the 
attention  of  the  "  spiritualty  and  temporalty" 
of  the  realm,  the  theological  question  as  to 
the  spiritual  power  of  the  Pope  in  and  over 
National  Churches  should  come  to  the  surface. 
It  was  simply  unavoidable.  The  question  did 
present  itself,  and  the  English  Convocations 
of  Canterbury  and  York  met  it  by  the  defini- 
tive declaration  (in  I534),1  "that  the  Bishop  of 
Rome  hath  no  greater  jurisdiction  conferred 
on  him  by  God,  in  this  Kingdom  of  England, 

1  Canterbury  declared  on  March  5,  1534,  and  York  on  May  5 
of  the  same  year. 


122  The  English  Reformation. 

than  any  other  foreign  Bishop."  That  declara- 
tion, subscribed  with  wonderful  unanimity  by 
"  bishops,  chapters,  monasteries,  colleges,  and 
hospitals,"  completed  the  work  which  Convo- 
cation had  begun  and  which  Convocation  thus 
ended.  The  usurpation  was  over;  and,  though 
for  a  little  while  it  might  revive  again,  it  was 
never  more  to  find  a  home  in  England. 

And  now  what  principles  are  apparent,  what 
results  are  reached  in  these  enactments — the 
detail  of  which  has  been  but  wearisome — of 
Parliament  and  Convocation  ?  What  light  is 
thrown  on  the  spirit,  methods,  purposes,  of 
the  English  Reformation  ? 

1.  The    vision    of   a    National    autonomous 
Church,  holding  the  Faith,   Orders,  and  Lit- 
urgy of  the    Universal    Church,    and    subject 
only  to   a  free   and   lawful    General    Council, 
which    looms   up,    indistinctly    but    unmistak- 
ably, in  the  petition  of  Convocation  in   1531, 
takes   on  shape  and  consistency  as  time  ad- 
vances, till  it  stands  out  a  living  thing  in  1534. 

2.  There  is  not  the  smallest  thought  of  sep- 
arating from  the  unity  of  the  Catholic  Church 


The  English  Reformation.  123 

of  Christ,  far  less  of  founding  a  new  Church. 
The  law  of  historic  continuity  is  all  along 
asserted  and  acted  on. 

3.  There    is    no   claim    of  new   and   before 
unheard  of  rights  or  privileges  for  Sovereign, 
Parliament,  or  Convocation.     Nothing  is  cre- 
ative, everything  is  declaratory  of  rights  and 
privileges   once  held,   since  usurped,   now   re- 
stored.    And    the    appeal    is   constantly   that 
of  Nicaea  to  the  "ancient  customs." 

4.  The  powers  and  duties  of  the  spiritualty 
and  temporalty  are  recognized  if  not  defined, 
and    their    several   jurisdictions    are    asserted. 
No  doubt  the  theory  was   also   held — for   all 
held   it   in   those   days — that   spiritual   power 
must  have  added  to  it  the  penal  force  of  civil 
law,  and  be  exercised  "'in  public  courts  after 
a  coercive  manner."     But  this  does  not  touch, 
in  principle,  the  distinction  so  plainly  made. 

5.  The  Pope  is  acknowledged   simply  as  a 
Bishop,  "  the  Bishop  of  Rome,  with  the  juris- 
diction defined  by  the  ancient  canons." 

6.  There   is   no   impassioned   grasping  after 
some  vague  idea,  some  unknown  right,  some 


124  The  English  Reformation. 

half-developed  theory.  No  single  wrong,  nor 
any  single  doctrine,  is  pushed  into  a  promi- 
nence and  pressed  to  an  extent  that  destroys 
the  balance  of  things,  and  brings  in  all  those 
evils  which  result  from  distorted  and  dislo- 
cated truths. 

7.  By  careful  steps  and  constitutional  meth- 
ods, repellant  to  those  who  delight  in  sur- 
prises and  effects,  situations  and  displays,  but 
welcomed  by  all  who  desire  well  compacted 
and  well  adjusted  results,  the  work  goes  on. 
The  coat  was  not  torn  in  pieces  in  hastily 
stripping  off  objectionable  fringes. 

Surely  these  are  things  to  be  thankful  for. 
And  I  hold  it  to  be  a  most  noteworthy  and 
significant  feature  of  this  whole  dealing  with 
the  papal  usurpation,  that  it  was  begun  and 
concluded  by  the  Clergy  of  England  and  not 
by  the  King  or  the  Parliament.2 

2  Mr.  Blunt  has  left  little  for  others  to  do  with  this  subject  but 
to  follow  in  his  footsteps  and  often  to  use  his  words.  This  I  have 
freely  done;  always  however  verifying — as  it  turned  out  need- 
lessly— any  references  which  were  made. 


LECTURE  IV. 

ROYAL  SUPREMACY 


LECTURE   IV. 

ROYAL  SUPREMACY. 

TNTIMATELY  connected  with  the  action  of 
the  Convocation  and  Parliament  of  England 
touching  the  Papal  Jurisdiction,  were  the  en- 
actments concerning  the  relations  of  the  Crown 
to  the  Church,  called, — by  a  not  very  felicitous 
choice  of  terms, — the  Royal  Supremacy.  This 
is  the  topic  which  now  claims  our  attention. 

There  is,  I  suppose,  in  the  minds  of  many 
people,  a  vague  notion  that  at  the  period  of 
the  Reformation  the  State,  as  one  party,  and 
the  Church  of  England,  as.  another  party,  en- 
tered into  some  contract  or  concordat  under 
which,  by  some  special  Act  of  Parliament,  the 
latter  became  the  Church  by  law  established. 

Nothing  can  be  further  from  the  .truth. 
"  The  Church .  of  England  could  not  have 
been  established  by  Act  of  Parliament,  for 


128  The  English  Reformation. 

I 

she  existed  as  the  established  Church  of  the 
Country  hundreds  of  years  before  Parliament 
came  into  being.  The  phrase  'by  law  estab- 
lished' is  misleading  when  applied  to  the 
Church  in  the  sense  of  her  having  been  created 
or  constituted  by  any  human  law  whatsoever, 
whether  promulgated  by  kingly  decree  or 
enacted  by  Act  of  Parliament.  In  no  such 
sense,  in  any  Church  or  State  document  where 
it  appears,  is  it  so  used,  or  so  intended  to  be 
understood.  When  the  Church  of  England  is 
spoken  of  as  'by  law  established/  nothing 
more  is  to  be  understood,"  because  nothing  more 
is  meant,  "than  that  her  Constitution,  Doc- 
trine, Liturgy  and  various  offices  having  been 
drawn  up  and  agreed  to  by  her  representatives, 
received  the  sanction  of  the  State,  and  that 
the  observance  of  them  is  enforceable  by  law 
on  those  who  are  her  ministers  or  members; 
further  that  she  is  protected  in  the  enjoyment 
of  her  rights,  privileges  and  endowments" — as 
what  religious  body  or  civil  corporation  is  not  ? 
— "by  the  law  of  the  land;  and  that  hers  is  the 
recognized  ecclesiastical  organization  and  form 


The  English  Reformation.  129 

of  worship  through  which  the  heads  of  the  State 
perform  all  public  religious  acts."3  The  State 
never  gave  the  Church  its  organization  nor 
ordered  its  government.  It  would  be  far  more 
correct  to  say  that  the  Church  in  England 
shaped  the  State.  Indeed  the  latest  historian 
of  the  English  people  does  say,  that  the  synods 
of  the  Church  "led  the  way  by  their  example 
to  national  parliaments;  the  canons  which  these 
synods  enacted  led  the  way  to  a  national  sys- 
tem of  law."4  The  State,  then,  never  estab- 
lished the  Church  by  any  statute  or  act.  The 
National  Church  grew  up  with  the  national 
life,  side  by  side  with  the  civil  polity  of  the 
nation. 

The  State  never  endowed  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land as  a  body.  Cathedral  churches  and  bish- 
ops' sees  were  endowed  by  individual  gifts 
to  individual  sees  and  cathedrals,  gifts  fre- 
quently bestowed  by  kings  and  princes.  Parish 
churches,  chapels,  chantries  and  even  monas- 
teries were  endowed  in  the  same  way,  and 

3  "Englishman's  Brief,"  p.  13. 

*  Green,  "Hist,  of  the  Eng.  People,"  vol.  i.  p.  59.  Am.  Ed. 


130  The  English  Reformation. 

. JS 

"  the  Norman  conquest  found  the  whole  land 
provided  with  churches,"  and  subdivided  into 
parishes.  None  of  those  endowments  depended 
on  Acts  of  Parliament:  and  while  monastic 
endowments  had  documentary  evidence  to 
offer,  parochial  endowments  rested  on  custom 
and  prescription.  "  Domesday  Book  furnishes 
direct  and  unimpeachable  testimony  on  this 
head."6  And  what  is  true  of  these  endow- 
ments is  also  true  of  what  are  known  as  tithes. 
Parliament  never  created  these.  It  recognizes 
their  existence  in  its  legislation;  it  supervises 
and  regulates  them;  it  solves,  or  undertakes 
to  solve,  difficulties  connected  with  them;  but 
it  did  not  create  them.  It  could  not.  For 
whether  we  regard  tithes  as  dating  from  the 
sixth  century  or  from  the  eighth,  "  they  were 
payable  and  were  paid  to  the  Church,"  as  a 

s  " Brief,"  pp.  30-33.  It  is  often  supposed  that  nearly  all  the 
endowments  of  the  Church  of  England  ante-date  the  Reformation. 
This  is  a  great  mistake.  The  income  from  endowments,  etc., 
given  since  the  Reformation  exceeds  that  from  ante -Reformation 
endowments,  by  about  ,£300,000.  See  Cutt's  "Turning  Points 
in  Eng.  Ch.  History,"  p.  318.  This  estimate  is  as  late  as  1872. 


The  English  Reformation.  131 

voluntary  rent  charge  on  the  land,  "  long  be- 
fore Parliament  existed,  or  before  anything 
answering  to  its  constitution  was  even  in 
embryonic  being.  The  payment  of  tithes  is 
of  more  ancient  date  than  the  Crown  of  Eng- 
land, the  Constitution  of  England,  or  the  Par- 
liament of  England." 6  By  no  Statute  of 
Parliament,  then,  was  the  Church  of  England 
established  or  endowed. 

While,  however,  the  testimony  of  history 
puts  all  this  beyond  the  possibility  of  doubt, 
it  is  equally  true  that  from  very  early  times 
the  English  sovereigns  had  close  connections 
with  and  intimate  relations  to  the  Church.  I 
do  not  mean  to  say  that  from  the  days  of 
the  barbarian  conversions,  and  even  from  the 
time  of  Constantine  this  was  not  the  case 
throughout  Christendom.  I  only  assert  it,  spe- 
cifically, of  England.  And  it  may  be  added, 
that  two  things  contributed  to  make  these 
connections  and  relations  especially  close  and 
intimate.  The  first  was  the  mode  in  which 

e  "Brief,"  pp.  33-48;  Green,  "Hist,  of  Eng.  People,"  vol. 
i.  p.  59. 


132  The  English  Reformation. 

the  English  people  were  converted  to  the 
Faith,  by  the  conversion  of  the  Sovereign  first 
and  of  his  subjects  afterwards.  The  second 
was  the  intensely  national  character  of  the 
English  Church,  which  has  been  already  spoken 
of.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  these  two  things 
would  work  together  in  bringing  about  the 
closest  relations  between  Church  and  Sover- 
eign. The  former  might  operate  more  directly, 
but  the  latter  would  work  not  less  powerfully; 
due  as  it  was  to  "that  insular  position,  that 
remoteness  from  the  centre  of  ecclesiastical 
power,  that  independent  character  of  its  in- 
habitants, that  comparative  freedom  of  its 
institutions,  which  gave  to  national  life  in 
England,  both  civil  and  ecclesiastical,  a  com- 
plexion of  its  own."7 

I  need  only  cite  one  of  the  laws  of  Edward 
the  Confessor  to  shew  you  how  the  relations 
of  the  King  of  England  and  the  Church  of 
England  were  regarded  in  the  last  half  of  the 
eleventh  century,  and  before  the  Norman  con- 
quest. "The  King,  who  is  the  Vicar  of  the 

7  Canon  Perry,  "History"  etc.,  p.  I. 


The  English  Reformation.  133 

Supreme  King,  is  appointed  to  this  end,  that 
he  may  rule  and  defend  the  kingdom  and  peo- 
ple of  the  Lord,  and  before  all  the  Holy  Church, 
from  such  as  would  harm  them;  and  that  he 
may  destroy  and  root  out  evil  doers."  The 
principle  embodied  in  this  enactment  was  rec- 
ognized, about  a  century  later,  in  the  Consti- 
tutions of  Clarendon,  in  which'  it  was  enacted 
that  appeals  should  go  from  the  archdeacon 
to  the  bishop,  from  the  bishop  to  the  arch- 
bishop, "  and  if  the  archbishop  failed  in  min- 
istering justice,  resort  was  to  be  had  finally 
to  the  lord  King,  that  by  his  precept  the  con- 
troversy might  terminate  in  the  archbishop's 
court;  so  that  it  should  go  no  further  without 
the  royal  consent." 

I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  either  the  laws 
of  Edward  the  Confessor  or  the  Constitutions 
of  Clarendon  created  the  relations  which  they 
declare,  between  the  Sovereign  and  the  Church 
of  England.  If  history  can  be  relied  on,  those 
relations  are  nearly  "  two  centuries  older  than 
the  revival  by  Charles  the  Great  of  the  Ro- 
man Empire,  and  more  than  two  centuries 


134  The  English  Reformation. 

\ 

older    than    the    recognized    kingdom    of   all 

England." 8     The  enactments  are  declaratory, 
not  creative. 

It  is  no  doubt  true  that  Theodore  of  Tar- 
sus, the  seventh  archbishop  of  Canterbury 
(who  was  sent  to  England  in  608  by  the  then 
Pope,  at  the  request  of  the  kings  of  Northum- 
bria  and  Kent),9  did  much  to  bring  the  island 
into  nearer  relations  with  the  Bishop  of  Rome. 
He  did  not,  however,  whether  he  intended  it 
or  not,  subjugate  the  Church  of  England  to 
the  Pope.  "When,  for  example  an  attempt 
was  made  to  enforce  the  mandates  of  the 
Pope  as  distinguished  from  his  fatherly  ad- 
vice, it  met  with  a  vigorous  repulse  from  two 
successive  kings,  assisted  by  their  clergy,  who 

s  "Church  Quarterly  Review,"  Oct.  1876,  p.  232.  "The 
union  of  Church  and  State  dated,  in  fact,  from  the  very  first 
appearance  of  the  Church  in  the  English  realms,  and  became 
so  blended  with  the  Constitution  ijself  as  to  have  been  com- 
pared to  the  mysterious  and  inseparable  connection  between  the 
soul  and  body  of  an  individual  man."  Brooke's  "Six  Judg- 
ments of  Privy  Council,"  Int.  p.  xiv.;  Comp.  Hook's  "Lives 
of  Archbishops,"  vol.  iii.,  Introd. 

»  Bede,  "Eccl.  Hist,"  book  iii.,  c.  29.  iv.  c.  I. 


The  English  Reformation.  135 

thus  stand  at  the  head  of  a  line  of  champions 
in  the  cause  of  English  freedom."  It  is  also 
true  that  William  the  Conqueror  separated 
the  temporal  and  ecclesiastical  jurisdictions, 
and  ordered  bishops  to  hold  courts  of  their 
own,  but  "  the  severance  was  effected  by,  and 
the  new  courts  derived  their  jurisdiction  from 
the  Crown  with  the  advice  of  the  Great  Coun- 
cil."10 I  do  not  know  that  anything  need  be 
added  to  show  you  what  was  the  ancient 
rule  as  to  the  Sovereign  and  the  Church  in 
the  realm  of  England. 

The  slightest  acquaintance  with  English  his- 
tory will  suffice  to  convince  any  man  that  this 
rule  of  relation  had  been  perpetually  disturbed, 
and  even  broken  up,  by  the  long  continued 
and  persistent  usurpations  of  the  papacy;  and 
that,  in  any  practical  reform  of  the  English 
Church  its  readjustment  must  challenge  at- 
tention and  action.  We  need  not  inquire 
whether  the  rule  was  the  best  that  could  be 
devised  or  not.  The  existing  evil  was  pres- 

'o  Hardwick,  "Middle  Ages,"  p.  16,  n.  I,  and  Brooke,  "Six 
Judgments,"  etc.,  Int.  p.  xiv.  xv. 


136  The  English  Reformation. 

j= 

ent  and  pressing.  It  had  been  superinduced 
upon  a  former  condition  of  things  which  had 
a  strong  hold  upon  the  memories  and  the  af- 
fections of  Englishmen;  and  which  was  special- 
ly connected  with  the  name  of  the  Confessor, 
of  whom  it  has  been  said,  "  His  was  the  one 
figure  that  stood  out  bright  against  the  dark- 
ness when  England  lay  trodden  underfoot  by 
Norman  conquerors;  and  so  dear  became  his 
memory  that  liberty  and  independence  itself 
seemed  incarnate  in  his  name."1  How  strong 
and  lasting  this  feeling  was  is  proved  by  the 
striking  fact  that  from,  at  least,  the  time  of 
Edward  II.,  in  1308,  till  the  Revolution  of 
1688,  the  sovereigns  of  England  either  in  the 
coronation  oath  or  in  promises  connected  with 
it  were  pledged  to  maintain  for  the  realm  the 
laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor.2  What  could 
be  more  natural  than  to  recur  to  this  an- 
cient order?  What  could  seem  more  practi- 

1  Green,  "History,"  etc.,  vol.  i.  p.  104. 

2  Taylor's  "  Glory  of  Regality,"  pp.  329,.  ff.  409.     William 
the  Conqueror  and  Henry  I.  were  both  compelled  to  promise  the 
maintenance  of  these  laws. 


The  English  Reformation.  137 

cal,  as  all  men's  thoughts  then  ran,  than  to 
remove  the  later  writing  in  the  palimpsest, 
and  recover  the  older  which  it  had  displaced  ? 
Our  present  questions,  then  are  these:  Was 
this  recurrence  made  ?  In  making  it  was  any 
breach  effected  with  the  past  in  the  historic 
Church  of  England  ?  These  queries  can  be 
answered  only  by  considering  what  was  act- 
ually done  at  the  period  of  our  Reformation; 
not,  I  beg  you  to  observe,  what  Henry  VIII. 
wished  to  do;  not  what  he  attempted  to  do 
by  the  help  of  servile  ecclesiastics  or  servile 
politicians;  not  what  he  did,  or  what  others 
after  him  have  done,  by  disregard  or  perver- 
sion of  law;  but  what  was  actually  done  by 
joint  action  of  Church  and  State;  what,,  by 
such  joint  action,  became  the  law  of  the 
Church  and  the  Realm,  whoever  might  evade 
it  or  violate  it  then,  or  in  time  to  come. 

Leaving  to  one  side  needless  historical  de- 
tails, we  shall  find  our  inquiries  fastening  on 
four  things:  the  Praemunire  of  1529-31,  the 
Submission  of  the  Clergy  in  1532,  the  Statute 
of  the  Appointment  of  Bishops  in  1533,  and 


138  The  English  Reformation. 

the  Act  of  Supremacy  of  1534.  There  can, 
I  think,  be  no  doubt  that  the  purposes  of 
Henry  all  through,  were  selfishly  and  out- 
rageously tyrannical;  that  he  was  attacking 
not  merely  the  usurped  jurisdiction  of  the 
papacy  but  the  liberties  of  the  Church  of 
England  solemnly  secured  by  Magna  Charta,3 
and  that  whenever  he  could  he  overrode  the 
limitations  of  law  in  favor  of  his  own  good 
pleasure.  However,  as  has  just  been  said,  it 
is  not  what  Henry  purposed  or  did,  but  what 
the  law  was  that  we  are  concerned  to  know. 
Let  it  never  be  forgotten  that  the  Reformed 
Church  of  England  is  in  no  way  responsible 
for  Henry  VIII. 

In  1529,  Wolsey  had  been  brought,  most 
unfairly,  under  the  operation  of  the  statute 
of  Praemunire  for  exercising  his  legatine  of- 
fice in  England.  I  say  unfairly,  because  the 
King  "  had  granted  him  a  license  under  the 
great  seal  to  use  the  authority  of  a  legate, 

a  The  first  provision  of  Magna  Charta,  as  confirmed  by  Henry 
HI.  is,  that  "the  Church  of  England  shall  be  free."  Gibson's 
"Codex,"  etc.,  vol  i.  p.  I. 


The  English  Reformation.  139 

and  had  allowed  the  function  of  legate  to  be 
discharged  by  him  for  fifteen  years."4  That 
however  was  as  nothing  to  Henry.  The  stat- 
ute was  applied,  and  the  late  all-powerful  fa- 
vorite became  an  outlaw  from  the  royal  pro- 
tection, and  incurred  the  forfeiture  of  his 
" lands,  tenements,  goods  and  chattels"  to 
the  Crown.  Nor  did  the  matter  end  here. 
The  statute  of  Richard  II.,  under  the  oper- 
ation of  which  Wolsey  had  been  brought, 
provided  that  all  "  abettors,  maintainers,  fau- 
tors  and  counsellors  "  of  one  who  should  vio- 
late it  were  to  incur  the  same  penalties 
as  the  principal.  So  that  the  entire  clergy 
and  all  the  laity  of  the  kingdom — in  other 
words  the  whole  realm — lay  at  the  mercy 
of  the  King,  and  were  liable  to  forfeiture 
of  goods  and  even  life  unless  he  should  be 
moved  to  pardon  them !  A  more  arbitrary 
and  monstrous  proceeding  can  hardly  be 
imagined. 

As  to  the  laity,  it  is  enough  to  say  that  after 
servile  submission  on  the  part  of  the  commons 

4  Dixon,  "History,"  etc.  vol.  i.  p.  46. 


140  The  English  Reformation. 

and  sharp  reproof  on  that  of  the  King,  fol- 
lowed by  a  brief  delay,  the  pardon  was  issued 
and  the  nation  relieved.  In  the  case  of  the 
clergy,  it  was  only  by  the  payment  of  an 
enormous  fine 5  that  their  release  was  secured. 
When  the  Act,  by  which  its  share  of  this 
fine  was  to  be  guaranteed,  came  before  the 
Convocation  of  Canterbury,  a  new  title  for 
the  Sovereign  was  found  in  its  preamble,  in 
the  words  "The  English  Church  and  Clergy, 
of  which  he  (the  King)  alone  is  Protector  and 
Supreme  Head."6  The  words  were  probably 
introduced  by  the  advice  of  Thomas  Cromwell, 
and  mark  the  beginning  of  his  injurious  inter- 
meddling with  the  Church.1  Be  that  as  it  may, 

5  About  $7,500,000  of  our  money. 

6  Wilkins,  "Cone."  iii.  p.  725. 

7  Card.  Pole  asserts  this  on  what  would  seem  to  be  sufficient 
testimony.     I  do  not  think  Mr.  Blunt  is  quite  justified  in  connect- 
ing Cranmer's  name  with  this  matter,  on  the  ground  that  in  au 
alleged  conversation  with  Fox  and  Gardiner  concerning  the  divorce, 
he  spoke  of  the  King  as  supreme  over  all  causes  in  the  realm  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  Pope  and  all  other  foreign  potentates.     He  only 
asserted  in  this  an  undeniable  historic  fact.     "Reformation,"  p. 
204. 


The  English  Reformation.  141 

Convocation  refused  to  pass  the  preamble  with 
the  new  title,  and  thus  the  title  sought  for  was 
rejected.  Another  was  then  proposed;  so  that 
the  words  should  read,  "of  which  he,  after 
God,  is  the  Protector  and  Supreme  Head." 
This  might  not  have  seemed  to  differ  much 
from,  certainly  not  to  go  beyond,  the  words 
of  the  laws  of  Edward  the  Confessor  "the 
Vicar  of  the  Supreme  King."  It  was,  how- 
ever, rejected;  for  fear,  no  doubt,  that,  under 
it  the  Sovereign  might  claim  spiritual  power 
and  even  authority  of  ministering  in  holy 
things. 

At  this  juncture  of  affairs  Archbishop  War- 
ham  presented  to  Convocation  a  third  proposi- 
tion, namely  that  the  words  of  the  preamble 
should  be,  "The  English  Church  and  Clergy, 
of  which  we  recognize  his  majesty  as  the  sin- 
gular protector,  the  sole  and  supreme  ruler, 
and  even,  so  far  as  is  allowed  by  the  law  of 
Christ,  the  Supreme  Head."  And  with  this 
form  the  King  was  obliged,  however  unwill- 
ingly, to  content  himself. 

The  Convocation  of  York  accepted  the  pre- 


142  The  English  Reformation. 

amble  with  even  less  readiness  than  that  of 
Canterbury.  Tunstal,  Bishop  of  Durham,8  who 
in  the  vacancy  of  the  archiespiscopal  see  pre- 
sided, spoke  with  great  clearness  and  modera- 
tion upon  the  subject;  limiting  the  supremacy 
to  temporal  matters;  saying,  "that,  we  are  all 
willing  to  acknowledge";  and  adding,  "with 
this  explanation  the  English  clergy  and  par- 
ticularly myself  are  willing  to  go  to  the  ut- 
most length  in  the  recognition."  Still  he 
complained  of  the  ambiguity  of  the  title, 
and  the  easy  possibility  of  its  perversion. 
All  this  brought  out  explanations  from  the 
King.  He  intended,  indeed,  to  claim  power 
and  jurisdiction  over  ecclesiastical  persons 
as  well  as  civil  magistrates;  "but  he  meant 
no  intrusion  into  the  sacerdotal  functions. 
Only  so  far  as  spiritual  things  included  prop- 
erty and  justice,  whatever  power  was  neces- 
sary to  preserve  the  peace  of  society  was 
comprehended  in  the  commission  borne  by 
the  supreme  ruler." 

8  Walter  Haddon  in  his  epitaph  on  Tunstal  calls  him,  aureus 
iste  senex. 


The  English  Reformation.  143 

In  all  this  there  is,  surely,  nothing  to  ob- 
ject to.  There  is  almost  nothing  beyond  the 
power  of  review  which  civil  courts  in  our  own 
country  and  our  own  time  claim.  The  title 
itself,  as  I  have  already  said,  does  not  at  all 
go  beyond  that  given  to  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor; there  is  really  nothing  in  it  but  "the 
strong  assertion  of  an  ancient  right";  a  right 
which  nobody  was  disposed  to  deny.9  It  is, 
therefore,  a  reassertion  of  ancient  usage,  and 
effects  no  break  with  the  past  of  the  historic 
Church  of  England. 

Before  we  leave  this  matter  of  the  royal 
title  one  thing  more  must  be  considered.  By 
adopting  the  preamble  of  an  act  in  which  it 
was  simply  mentioned — and  that  only  after 
debate  and  explanation — the  King  obtained 
and  the  Convocations  gave  an  "  incidental 
recognition  of  the  royal  supremacy."  Possi- 
bly the  chief  danger  of  its  abuse  lay  in  this 
very  thing;  the  lack  of  definite  assertions  and 
limitations.  Still,  we  must  remember,  the 

o  Dixon,  "History,"  etc.,  vol.  i.  pp.  66,  67;  Blunt,  "His- 
tory,"  etc.,  p.  209. 


144  The  English  Reformation. 

possibilities  covered  by  this  indefiniteness  are 
not  all  in  one  direction.  If  it  gives  room  for 
usurpation  and  oppression,  it  also  leaves  room 
for  resistance. 

We  have  next  to  see  how  this  incidentally 
and  indefinitely  asserted  supremacy  was  de- 
fined and,  as  we  may  say,  practically  applied. 
And  first  I  must  speak  of  what  is  known  as 
"  The  Submission  of  the  Clergy  "  in  1 532.  This 
followed  on  a  memorable  document  addressed 
by  the  Commons  of  England  to  the  King, 
and  known  as  "The  Supplication  against  the 
Ordinaries."10  Some  of  the  complaints  in  this 
document  were  undoubtedly  well  founded, 
some  were  exaggerated,  and  others  had  no 
foundation.  It  is  not  at  all  improbable  that  the 
Supplication  was  due,  in  the  first  instance,  to 
royal  suggestion.  However  that  may  be,  the 
King  made  it  the  occasion  of  immediate  ac- 
tion. He  sent  to  Convocation  a  demand  con- 
tained in  three  articles:  First,  that  no  consti- 
tution or  ordinance  should  be  enacted  by  the 

10  It  should  be  remembered  that  the  title  Ordinary  did  not 
imply  that  its  holder  should  of  necessity  be  a  bishop. 


The  English  Reformation.  145 

clergy  or  put  in  execution  in  the  realm,  with- 
out the  royal  authority  and  assent. 

Second,  that  whereas  many  of  the  provincial 
constitutions  were  prejudicial  to  the  King's  au- 
thority and  onerous  to  his  subjects,  a  com- 
mission of  thirty-two  persons — sixteen  from 
the  two  houses  of  parliament  and  sixteen 
from  the  clergy — should  be  appointed  by  the 
King,  who  should  review  these  canons  and 
abrogate  such  of  them  as  they  saw  fit. 

Third,  that  other  existing  constitutions 
should  stand  only  when  they  had  received 
the  royal  assent. 

The  sweeping  character  of  these  demands 
shews,  I  think,  what  the  King's  purposes  were; 
namely,  to  abrogate  all  the  existing  laws  of 
the  Church  and  to  concentrate  the  entire  law- 
making  power  in  himself.  Had  this  plan  been 
fully  carried  out,  not  one  law  of  the  Church 
would  have  remained  from  the  past,  not  one 
could  have  been  enacted  for  the  future,  save 
at  the  pleasure  of  the  Sovereign.  The  sub- 
jugation of  the  Church  to  the  State  would 
have  been  complete.  It  was  not  carried  out, 


146  The  English  Reformation. 

however,  and  the  danger  of  a  break  with 
all  the  past  was  avoided.  We  have  now  to 
see  what  was  done,  and  in  what  the  action 
resulted. 

The  third  article,  which  was  the  really  ob- 
noxious one  and  contained  the  demand  for 
complete  subjugation  was,  at  all  hazards,  res- 
olutely refused.  Refusal  involved  great  and 
unknown  personal  dangers,  but  all  risks  were 
bravely  incurred,  and  the  refusal  was  absolute. 
The  King  yielded,  and  the  article  so  fraught 
with  evil  was  virtually  withdrawn. 

What  was  done,  and  what  settled  the  rela- 
tions of  Convocation  and  the  Crown,  is  con- 
tained in  the  famous  Submission  of  the  Clergy. 
This  Act  of  Convocation  provided  that  hence- 
forward that  body  should  enact  and  promul- 
gate no  canons  or  constitutions  except  as  it 
was  licensed  by  the  King  to  meet  for  business; 
that  all  canons  thus  passed  should  receive 
the  royal  assent  before  they  were  executed  or 
put  in  ure;  and,  further,  that  a  commission  of 
thirty-two  persons  should  be  appointed  by  the 
Crown,  at  the  head  of  which  was  to  be  the 


The  English  Reformation.  147 

King  himself,  who  should  review  the  existing 
canons  and  constitutions,  and  abrogate  such 
as,  in  the  opinions  of  "  the  most  part,"  did  not 
stand  with  "  God's  laws  and  the  laws  of  the 
realm";  provided,  that  such  as  "  the  most 
part"  determined  to  be  accordant  with  the 
laws  of  God  and  of  the  land  should,  under 
the  royal  assent,  "  stand  in  full  strength  and 
power." 

Thus  the  firmness  of  Convocation  frustrated 
the  tyrannical  purposes  of  the  Sovereign;  and 
the  demand  which  would  have  swept  away  all 
existing  canon  law,  placed  all  present  and 
future  ecclesiastical  legislation  entirely  in  the 
Sovereign's  hands,  and  made  the  Church  the 
merest  creature  of  the  State,  was  refused.  It 
is  one  of  the  many  instances,  too  many  to 
be  lightly  passed  by,  in  which  the  overruling 
providence  of  God  has  preserved  the  Church 
of  England  from  external  attacks  or  internal 
evils  which  threatened  her  destruction. 

The  commission,  I  must  say  in  passing,  of 
thirty-two  persons  to  revise  the  canon  law 
was  never  appointed  in  Henry's  reign.  In 


148  The  English  Reformation* 

1551,  under  Edward  VI.,  a  commission  of  eight 
persons  did  revise  the  ecclesiastical  law,  and 
their  labors  resulted  in  what  is  known  as  the 
Reformatio  Legum.  As  this  code  never  re- 
ceived the  royal  assent,  it  is  only  useful  for 
historical  appeal  as  to  opinions  and  princi- 
ples. It  never  possessed  any  legal  authority. 
Following  the  Submission  of  the  Clergy 
came,  in  1534,  the  "Act  of  Supremacy" 
passed  by  Parliament  alone.  This  act  rec- 
ognized the  right  of  the  Sovereign — it  did  not 
undertake  to  create  it — "to  visit,  repress,  re- 
dress, reform,  order,  connect,  restrain,  and 
amend  all  such  errors,  heresies,  abuses,  con- 
tempts, and  enormities,  whatsoever  they  be, 
which  by  any  manner  of  spiritual  authority 
or  jurisdiction  ought  or  may  lawfully  be 
reformed."1  This  statute  undoubtedly  gave 

1  26  Hen.  VIII.  chap.  i.  This  was  followed  by  another  act 
making  it  high  treason  to  "  attempt  to  deprive  "  the  King,  Queen, 
or  heirs-apparent  of  "the  dignity,  title  or  name  of  their  royal 
estate,  etc."  It  was  a  fearful  statute,  and  fearfully  used.  But 
it  disappeared  at  the  accession  of  Edward  VI. ;  and  at  all  events 
is  no  part  of  Church  history  proper. 


The  English  Reformation.  149 

the  King  visitatorial  power;  but  it  did  not 
confer  new  power  nor  power  without  limi- 
tation. 

It  did  not  confer  new  power.  If  any  testi- 
mony on  this  point  can  be  considered  sufficient 
to  establish  it,  the  testimony  of  Gardiner  of 
Winchester,  Tunstal  of  Durham  and  Stokes- 
ley  of  London  must  surely  suffice.  They  all 
agree  that  "  no  new  thing  was  introduced 
when  the  King  was  declared  to  be  the  Su- 
preme Head."  Bracton,  in  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury goes  quite  as  far  in  speaking  of  the  King 
as  the  Act  of  Supremacy  does.  Coke  and 
Blackstone  both  assert  that  power  was  re- 
stored to  the  Crown  not  conferred  upon  it. 2 
Stephens  sums  all  up  by  saying  that  the  re- 
sult of  the  acts  was  to  enable  the  Sovereign 
"  to  reassume  his  own  authority,  and  the  pre- 
rogatives of  his  Crown,  from  which  the  kings  of 

2  Bracton,  repeating  the  words  of  the  laws  of  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor, calls  the  King  "  Dei  vicarius  tarn  in  spiritualibus  quam  in 
temporalibus ."  See  all  the  persons  referred  to,  quoted  in  Blunt, 
"Reformation,"  etc.,  pp.  230,  233.  See,  also,  Brooke's  "Six 
Privy  Council  Judgments,"  p.  xi. 


150  The  English  Reformation. 

England  had  never  formally  departed,  though 
they  had  for  a  century  connived  at  an  invasion 
and  usurpation  upon  them."3 

Not  being  a  new  power  created,  but  an  old 
one  recognized,  neither  was  it  a  power  with- 
out limitations.  In  its  own  revival,  its  old 
limitations  must  revive  also,  unless  specifically 
barred  out  by  statutory  enactment.  While, 
altogether  apart  from  this  important  consider- 
ation, the  very  wording  of  the  act  shows,  as 
has  been  well  said,  that  the  supremacy  "is 
only  made  a  corrective  jurisdiction,  and  noth- 
ing is  said  about  the  directive  jurisdiction  by 
which  the  ordinary  functions  of  the  Church, 
when  unaffected  by  offence  or  dispute,  are 
discharged."4 

I  think  I  may  claim  that  the  two  questions 
asked  some  time  back  are  now  answered;  that 
we  are  entitled  to  say  that  there  was  a 

3  Stephen's  "Eng.  Constitution,"  vol.  i.  p.  193.  Article 
XXXVI.  of  1562— XXXVII.  of  1571— must  also  be  taken  into 
account.  Its  testimony  is  specially  to  the  point  because  it  was 
passed  on  account  of  great  perversions  of  the  Supremacy. 

•*  Blunt,  "Reformation,"  p.  233. 


The  English  Reformation.  151 

recurrence  to  ancient  usage  in  all  the  action 
we  have  been  reviewing,  and  that  there  was 
no  break  with  the  historic  part  of  the  English 
Church.  I  know,  indeed,  that  the  vague  word- 
ing of  the  Act  of  Supremacy  left  an  oppor- 
tunity for  Henry  which  he  was  not  slow  to 
seize,  and  of  which  I  shall  have  occasion  al- 
most immediately  to  speak.  But  the  abuse 
of  an  enactment  cannot  be  taken  into  account 
in  its  rightful  interpretation.  Nor  may  it  be 
forgotten  that  the  Act  of  Supremacy  was  re- 
pealed in  1553,  and  never  again  revived  in  its 
original  form.  Elizabeth  refused  the  title  Su- 
preme Head,  and  substituted  for  it  that  of 
"  Supreme  Governor.  ...  as  well  in  all  spiritual 
and  ecclesiastical  things  or  causes,  as  tempo- 
ral." She  also  expressly  repudiated  in  an 
"  Admonition  to  simple  men  deceived  by  mali- 
cious," all  idea  of  challenging  "  authority  and 
power  of  ministry  of  divine  service  in  the 
Church."  And,  moreover,  in  the  statute  by 
which  the  corrective  jurisdiction  of  the  Crown 
was  restored,  there  were  "  definite  limitations 
which  brought  it  into  agreement  with  the 


152  The  English  Reformation. 

* . 

common  law."5  Since  Elizabeth's  time  inter- 
ferences with  the  proper  legislative  and  ju- 
dicial functions  of  the  Church  have  proceeded 
from  Parliament  rather  than  from  the  Crown. 
Let  me  sum  up  the  matter  in  the  words  of 
Mr.  Gladstone:  "A  supremacy  of  power  in 
making  and  administering  Church  law  as  well 
as  State  law  was  to  vest  in  the  Sovereign; 
but  in  making  Church  laws  he  was  to  ratify 
the  acts  of  the  Church  represented  in  Convo- 
cation, and  if  there  were  need  of  the  highest 
civil  sanctions,  to  have  the  aid  of  Parliament 
also.  In  administering  Church  law  he  was  to 
discharge  this  function  [ecclesiastical  courts 
remained]  through  the  medium  of  bishops  and 
divines,  canonists  and  civilians,  as  her  own 
most  fully  authorized  best  instructed  sons,  fol- 
lowing in  each  case  the  analogy  of  his  ordinary 
procedure  as  head* of  the  State."  This  may 
not  be  the  best  ideal  settlement  of  the  rela- 
tions of  the  Church  and  the  State.  But  it 
was  assuredly  the  only  one  possible  in  Eng- 

8  I  Eliz.  c.  I.  Sec.  17.     Injunctions  of  1559,  in  Sparrow's  "Col- 
lections," (1846),  p.  12.     Blunt,  ut  sup,  p.  234. 


The  English   Reformation.  153 

land,  as  men's  ideas  went,  in  the  sixteenth 
century;  the  only  one  possible  if  ancient  En- 
glish precedent  was  to  be  appealed  to,  in 
throwing  off  the  usurped  jurisdiction  of  the 
papacy.  It  gave  the  State,  indeed,  rights  of 
review,  rights  of  promulgating  ecclesiastical 
laws  and  "putting  them  in  ure"  with  the 
penal  sanctions  of  civil  law  annexed,  to  them; 
but  it  did  not  make  the  State  the  source  of 
spiritual  authority,  or  yield  to  it  any  other 
than  a  corrective  jurisdiction. 

Just  here  the  objections  may  be  raised  that 
the  appointment  of  the  bishops  of  the  English 
Church  was,  by  a  statute  passed  in  1533,  vest- 
ed in  the  Crown,  and  has  so  continued  ever 
since6;  and  that  bishops  received  commissions 
from  the  Crown,  revocable  at  the  royal  pleas- 
ure, by  which  they  acknowledged  themselves 
to  be  the  officers  of  the  King  and  nothing 
more7.  From  these  premises  the  conclusion 

6  I  do  not  take  into  account  the  temporary  abrogation  of  the 
conge  d'  elire  in  Edward's  reign;  for  the  statute  by  which  it  was 
accomplished  was  not  revived  under  Elizabeth. 

7  So  Froude  asserts,  "History,"  etc.  vol.  v.  p.  23,  Am.  Ed. 


154  The  English  Reformation. 

is  deduced  that  the  Church  became  the  crea- 
ture of,  and  was  identified  with,  the  State. 

Whatever  else  may  be  said  as  to  the  mode 
of  Episcopal  appointment  under  the  Statute 
of  1533  this  at  least  must  be  said: — No  real 
change  from  what  had  been  its  position  all 
along  came  upon  the  Church.  The  statute 
itself  says  of  the  license  issued  under  the  great 
seal,  which  authorized  election  to  a  vacant 
see,  "  as  of  old  time  hath  been  accustomed  to 
proceed  to  the  election  of  an  archbishop  or 
bishop  of  the  see  so  void."  Says  Sir  William 
Blackstone,  "  The  very  nomination  to  bishop- 
rics, that  ancient  prerogative  of  the  Crown,  was 
wrested  from  King  Henry  the  First,  and  after- 
wards from  his  successor  King  John ;  and 
seemingly  indeed  conferred  on  the  chapters 
belonging  to  each  see;  but  by  means  of  the 
frequent  appeals  to  Rome,  through  the  intri- 
cacy of  the  laws  which  regulated  canonical 
elections,  was  eventually  vested  in  the  Pope."8 
There  was,  in  fact,  no  real  change.  The  elec- 

8  "Commentaries,"  vol.  iv.  p.  107,  Am.  Ed.,  1772.  Compare 
Gibson's  "Codex,"  vol.  i.  p.  121,  n.  a. 


The  English  Reformation.  155 

tion  by  the  chapter  was  a  legal  fiction  before 
1533  as  well  as  afterwards.  The  appointment 
by  the  Sovereign — leaving  out  papal  interfer- 
ence— was  not  more  a  reality  after  that  date 
than  it  was  before. 

What  is  true  of  the  election  of  bishops  is 
also  true  of  the  commissions  taken  out  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  and  renewed  in  that  of  Edward. 
These,  no  doubt,  on  their  face  seemed  to  as- 
sert that  all  spiritual  jurisdiction  as  well  as 
temporal  flowed  from  the  Sovereign;  so  that, 
looking  only  on  the  surface,  careless  or  preju- 
diced readers  and  writers  are  very  likely  to 
conclude  that  the  bishops  made  themselves, 
by  this  act,  only  officers  of  the  State.  Like 
many  another  easily  reached  conclusion,  how- 
ever, this  one  will  not  bear  investigation. 

At  the  very  outset  we  meet  two  historic  facts 
which  largely  modify  the  conclusion  just  men- 
tioned. First,  these  commissions  were  taken 
out  by  sundry  bishops,  "  Lee,  Stokesley,  Gard- 
iner, Longland,  and  Tunstal,"  who  were  all 
bishops  of  the  "  old  learning  "  as  it  was  called, 
and  whose  sentiments  as  to  the  source  of  spir- 


156  The  English  Reformation. 

itual  authority  are  perfectly  well  known.  Next, 
in  the  commissions  themselves  are  found  such 
words  as  these:  "  to  execute  all  other  parts  of 
episcopal  authority,  beside  and  beyond  those 
which,  by  the  Holy  Writings  are  recognized 
as  divinely  committed  unto  thee."  This  ex- 
press exception  of  divinely-given  powers, 
proves,  beyond  a  question,  that  there  was 
believed  to  be  somewhat  in  the  office  of  a 
bishop  which  did  not  come  from  the  State; 
while  the  retention  and  use,  all  along,  of  the 
rite  of  the  ordination  or  consecration  of  a 
bishop,  shows  precisely  what  that  was.9 

9  Canon  Liddon  thinks  that  Bonner's  commission,  which  is 
extant,  implies  that  Thomas  Cromwell  could  have  held  ordina- 
tions had  he  not  been  too  much  occupied,  and  that,  for  this  reason 
alone,  they  were  committed  to  the  Bishop  of  London.  I  cannot 
so  read  his  commission,  nor  that  of  Cranmer  in  the  reign  of  Ed- 
ward VI.  Two  things  are  plainly  mentioned;  first,  ordination, 
second  the  finding  fit  persons  to  be  ordained  and  instituted  to 
benefices. 

Now,  considering  the  distinction  so  clearly  made  in  the  "Institu- 
tion" between  power  of  orders  and  power  of  jurisdiction,  a  dis- 
tinction so  familiar  to  Bonner,  Cranmer,  and  all  others,  is  it  not 
much  more  likely  that  what  Cromwell  was  too  busy  to  attend  to 
was,  not  ordination  involving  the  potestas  ordinis,  but  the  other 


The  English  Reformation.  157 

Still,  it  may  be  asked,  What  did  the  com- 
missions mean  ?  What  power  were  they  sup- 
posed to  convey  ?  The  answer  to  those  ques- 
tions is  not  far  to  seek.  I  shall  venture  to 
present  it  somewhat  in  detail,  inasmuch  as  it 
involves  principles,  the  misapprehension  of 
which  has  left  many  well-intentioned  persons 
in  an  obscurity  almost  Cimmerian  as  to  the 
English  Reformation. 

In  the  year  1537  there  appeared  the  Formu- 

matters  which  involved  only  the  pote stas  jurisdictionis?  Such  an 
explanation  is  in  accord  not  only  with  The  Institution  of  1537,  but 
also  with  The  Erudition  of  1543,  which  says,  that  "The  nomina- 
tion, election,  presentation,  or  appointing  of  ecclesiastical  ministers 
is  wholly  left  unto  the  positive  laws  or  ordinances  of  every  Chris- 
tian region,  provided  and  made,  or  to  be  made,  in  that  behalf  with 
the  assent  of  the  prince  and  ruler;  "  and  at  the  same  time  asserts 
that  the  power  of  ordination  is  given  to  bishops  by  the  "Word of 
God."  These  are  the  words  of  that  saving  clause  in  the  commis- 
sions, in  which  Canon  Liddon  finds  it  "difficult  to  think  that  the 
power  of  ordination  was  included."  On  the  contrary,  it  is  difficult 
to  see  to  what  else  they  can  possibly  refer.  If  we  are  to  guard 
against  what  is  called  "  Anglican  optimism,"  let  us  not  forget  that 
there  may  be  such  a  thing  as  Anglican  pessimism.  See  Liddon's 
"Church  Troubles,"  p.  xiii.  note  4;  Dixon's  " History,"  ii.  168; 
"Formularies  of  Henry  VIII.,  his  Reign,"  p.  277. 


158  The  English   Reformation. 

lary  known  as  the  "  Institution  of  a  Christian 
Man."  It  was  drawn  up  by  a  commission  con- 
sisting of  all  the  bishops  and  twenty-five  other 
divines,  and — it  is  to  be  specially  noted — among 
the  bishops  are  found  all  those  who  took  out 
the  commissions  from  the  Crown, — on  which 
such  stress  has  been  laid, — in  the  reign  of 
Henry.  Now  in  that  part  of  the  Institution 
which  treats  of  Holy  Orders,  the  jurisdiction 
of  bishops  is  discussed  at  length.  Wherefore, 
inasmuch  as  the  same  persons  who  received 
commissions  of  jurisdictions  from  the  Crown 
here  set  forth  their  judgments  concerning 
jurisdiction,  we  learn  from  themselves  what 
they  understood  those  commissions  to  mean; 
and  if  there  can  be  such  a  thing  as  a  decisive 
contemporaneous  exposition,  we  assuredly  ob- 
tain it  here. 

The  discussion  begins  with  the  assertions 
that  the  "  whole  power  and  authority  belong- 
ing unto  priests  and  bishops  is  divided  into 
two  parts,  whereof  the  one  is  called  ppt.estas 
ordinis  [the  authority  of  order],  and  the  other 
is  called  potestas  jurisdictions  [authority  of 


The  English  Reformation.  159 

jurisdiction];"  and  that  "good  consent  and 
agreement  hath  always  been  in  the  Church 
concerning  the  said  first  part,  and,  contrary, 
much  controversy  for  this  other  part  of  juris- 
diction." Jurisdiction  is  next  declared  to  con- 
sist in  three  things: 

First,  excommunication;  in  regard  to  which 
two  limitations  are  insisted  on;  namely,  that 
"  all  punishment  which  priests  or  bishops  may, 
by  the  authority  of  the  gospel,  inflict  or  put 
to  any  person,  is  by  word  only,  and  not  by 
any  violence  or  constraint  corporal;"  and  also 
that  such  punishment  may  be  forborne  if  it 
shall  seem  desirable  for  the  well-being  of  the 
offender  or  the  peace  of  the  Church: 

Secondly,  the  power  to  admit  to  cure  of 
souls  in  benefices,  to  which  they  have  been 
nominated,  persons  whom  they  shall  judge 
worthy;  the  right  of  nomination  to  bishoprics 
being  recognized  as  resting  in  the  Sovereign, 
and  that  of  presenting  to  other  benefices  as 
vesting  in  the  patron  or  founder: 

Thirdly,  the  power  to  make  laws  and  can- 
ons touching  ecclesiastical  ministration. 


160  The  English  Reformation. 

This  entire  jurisdiction,  considered  in  itself 
and  as  a  whole,  is  by  the  "  authority  of  the 
gospel"  committed  to  priests  and  bishops;  yet 
the  "  particular  order,  form,  and  manner  req- 
uisite to  the  execution  of  the  same,"  the  enum- 
eration of  offences,  the  organizing  of  courts 
for  trial,  the  citation  of  offenders  and  of  wit- 
nesses, the  processes  of  procedure,  the  exe- 
cution of  sentences,  are  not  prescribed  in 
Scripture  but  are  left  to  the  decision  of  the 
Church.  Such  decision  was  to  be  expressed 
in  "  rules  and  ordinances  to  be  made  by  the 
ministers  of  the  Church,  with  the  consent  of 
the  people,  before  such  time  as  princes  were 
christened,  and  after  they  were  christened, 
with  the  authority  and  consent  of  the  said 
princes  and  their  people." 

Then  comes  the  conclusion.  "It  is  out  of 
all  doubt  that  the  priests  and  bishops  never 
had  any  authority  by  the  gospel  to  punish 
any  man  by  corporal  violence;  and  therefore 
they  were  oftentimes  moved  of  necessity  to 
require  Christian  princes  to  interpone '  their 
authority,  and  by  the  same  to  constrain  and 


The  English  Reformation.  161 

reduce  inobedient  persons  unto  the  obedience 
and  good  order  of  the  Church;  which  the 
Christian  princes  ....  not  only  did  gladly 
execute,  but  did  also  give  unto  priests  and 
bishops  further  power  and  jurisdiction  in  cer- 
tain other  temporal  and  civil  matters 

And  therefore  it  was  and  shall  be  always  law- 
ful unto  the  said  kings  and  princes,  and  their 
successors,  with  the  consent  of  their  parlia- 
ments, to  revoke  and  call  again  into  their 
own  hands,  or  otherwise  to  restrain  all  the 
power  and  jurisdiction  which  was  given  and 
assigned  unto  priests  and  bishops  by  the  li- 
cense, consent,  sufferance  and  authority  of  the 
said  kings  and  princes,  and  not  by  the  author- 
ity of  God  and  His  gospel,  whensoever  they 
shall  have  such  grounds  and  causes  so  to  do 
as  shall  be  necessary,  wholesome  and  expe- 
dient."10 

w  "Formularies  of  the  Reign  of  Henry  VIII.,"  p.  107,  ff.,  Oxf. 
1825.  Dixon,  "History,"  vol.  ii.,  p.  167,  168.  In  1825,  in  an 
examination  before  a  select  committee  of  Parliament,  the  Irish 
Roman  Bishop  Murray  testified,  that  the  Pope  could  exercise 
temporal  power  in  states  only  when  the  right  to  do  so  had  been  "  con- 
ferred on  him  by  the  different  Christian  powers;"  and  that  "the 


1 62  The  English  Reformation. 

Now,  if  words  have  any  meaning,  these 
words  mean  that  while  authority  of  jurisdic- 
tion as  well  as  of  orders  is  originally  from 
God,  the  right  to  exercise  that  jurisdiction 
in  definite  places,  in  exterior  courts,  with 
coercive  power  and  legal  penalties  is  not 
from  God  but  from  the  State.  It  is  equally 
clear  that  it  is  not  the  former,  but  the  latter 
power  which  the  commissions  contemplated, 
and  that  in  this  regard  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land stood,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  on  the 
same  ground  as  any  church  which  allowed 
ecclesiastical  enactments  and  sentences  to  be 
enforced  under  civil  sanctions  and  penalties. 
If  in  such  churches  ecclesiastical  rulers  did 
not,  by  such  allowance,  make  themselves 
creatures  of  the  State,  no  more  did  they  in 
the  Reformed  Church  of  England.1  Well,  in- 

power  which  he  exercised  under  that  authority,  of  course  passed 
away,  when  those  temporal  princes  who  granted  it  chose  to  with- 
draw it."  See  Friedrich's  "  Documenta"  etc.,  I.  Abtheilung,  p. 

237- 

i  There  are  passages,  too  long  for  insertion,  but  directly  to  this 
point,  hi  BramhalPs  "Just  Vindication,"  Works,  pp.  77,  134, 
Ed.  1677. 


The  English  Reformation.  163 

deed,  would  it  have  been  for  the  Church  if, 
remembering  that  no  power  to  inflict  cor- 
poral punishments  on  offenders  had  been  given 
her  from  God,  she  had  never  sought  such 
power  from  the  State.  Well  would  it  have 
been  for  her  had  no  such  power  been  given 
her;  no  punishments  touching  life  or  limb, 
personal  freedom  or  property,  been  inflicted 
by  her;  no  carnal  weapons  been  placed  in 
spiritual  hands.  But  such  a  thought  was  in 
no  man's  mind  in  the  sixteenth  century. 

While,  however,  what  we  have  been  con- 
sidering shows  that  neither  by  Church  nor 
parliamentary  enactment  was  there  any  break 
with  the  past,  but  rather  a  very  careful  re- 
currence to  the  ancient  usage  of  the  realm, 
it  is  equally  true  that  Henry  VIII.  perverted 
or  overrode  these  statutes  for  his  own  self- 
ish and  tyrannical  purposes.  Still,  law  remains 
law  however  much  perverted  or  overridden; 
and  it  is  by  it,  and  n-ot  by  any  illegal  tyr- 
anny under  it,  that  the  English  Reforma- 
tion is  to  be  tested.  "  Henry's  later  view  of 
the  royal  supremacy"  no  doubt  "appears  to 


164  The  English 


have  been  that  it  contained  within  itself 
all  the  rights  that  had  been  claimed  for 
the  papal  supremacy;  but  such  a  view  was 
never  recognized  by  any  statute,"  nor  by 
any  subsequent  practice.  Both  alike  "  re- 
strict it  to  the  restoration  of  the  ancient 
regal  jurisdiction."2 

The  King's  chief  agent  in  carrying  out  his 
purpose  of  overriding  law  and  concentrating 
power  in  himself,  was  Thomas  Cromwell.  This 
man,  after  a  roving  life  of  varied  adventure,  be- 
came a  member  of  Wolsey's  household,  serv- 
ing that  prelate  "first  as  a  steward,  then  as 
a  solicitor,  and  lastly  in  that  defence  before 
the  commons  which  laid  the  foundation  of 
his  own  high  fortunes."3  This  is  not  the 
place  for  any  detailed  account  of  Wolsey's 
plans  for  the  reformation  of  the  clergy  and 
laity  of  England.  There  are,  however,  two 
things  that  should  be  noticed  because  of  their 
connection  with  the  matter  now  in  hand.  First 
in  carrying  out  his  purpose  of  increasing  the 

2  Blunt,  "Reformation,"  p.  235. 

3  Cavendish,  "Life  of  Card.  Wolsey,"  p.  170,  note. 


The  Eitglisk  Reformation.  165 

number  of  bishoprics  in  England  and  estab- 
lishing colleges  and  professorships  in  the  uni- 
versities, Wolsey  proposed  to  provide  the  req- 
uisite endowments  by  suppressing  the  smaller 
and  some  of  the  larger  monasteries,  and  ap- 
propriating their  revenues. 

Next,  in  all  his  plans — whatever  may  be 
thought  or  said  of  them — he  wrought  first  as 
Papal  Legate,  and,  at  last,  as  Vicar-General 
of  the  Pope,  a  post  to  which  he  was  ap- 
pointed in  1527. 

A  person,  therefore,  occupying  as  Cromwell 
did  a  position  of  trust  and  confidence  in  the 
Cardinal's  household,  must  have  become  fa- 
miliar with  the  idea  of  a  vicar -generalship, 
and  accustomed  to  the  thought  of  the  sup- 
pression of  monasteries  and  diversion  of  their 
revenues.  In  entering  on  the  service  of  Hen- 
ry after  he  left  that  of  his  former  master,  with 
purpose,  as  he  said,  "to  make  or  mar,"  these 
ideas  and  thoughts  would  naturally  go  with 
him;  and  we  may,  accordingly,  without  much 
hesitation,  regard  the  institution  of  the  Vicar- 
Generalship,  and  the  treatment  of  the  monas- 


1 66  The  English  Reformation. 

teries  as  directly  due  to  him  and  to  his  train- 
ing under  Wolsey. 

He  became  Vicar-General  in  1535,  and  held 
the  office  till  his  fall  in  1540.  In  his  hands— 
the  hands  of  an  unscrupulous  and  time-serv- 
ing man — the  office  became  an  instrument  of 
oppression  and  wrong.4  But  whatever  it  was 
made  and  however  it  was  used,  it  was  some- 
thing thrust  upon  the  Church  from  without, 
not  developed  from  within.  It  was  endured 
like  any  other  affliction,  but  it  was  never  ac- 
cepted, nor  was  the  Church,  in  any  proper 
sense,  responsible  for  it.  It  lasted  for  five 
years  till  he  who  held  it  fell,  and  it  was  never 
renewed.  However  succeeding  sovereigns  may 
have  put,  as  we  may  say,  the  supremacy  "  into 
commission,"  no  one  has  ever  tried  the  plan 
of  Henry  VIII.  His  Vicar-General  is  the  only 
one  that  England  has  ever  seen.  The  pass- 
ing shadow  cannot  be  said  to  be  a  part  of  that 
on  which  it  merely  fell. 

4  Pole  and  Fox  in  their  estimates  of  Cromwell  illustrate  the 
different  views  it  is  possible  to*  take  of  the  same  character.  The 
truth,  as  in  most  such  cases,  probably  lies  between  the  two. 


The  English   Reformation.  167 

The  great  line  of  practical  operation  on 
which  the  exercise  of  the  vicar -generalship 
moved,  brings  up  the  visitation  of  the  mon- 
asteries and  their  subsequent  dissolution.  Nei- 
ther the  visitation  nor  the  dissolution  of  these 
institutions,  however,  so  originated  with  Crom- 
well, as  to  be  properly  his  own. 

It  had  long  been  felt  that  reformation 
in  this  direction  was  essential.  The  number 
of  the  monasteries  was  excessive.  The  evils 
of  multiplying  them  were  recognized  at  the 
Lateran  Council  of  1215;  but  the  papal  in- 
terests, which  the  monastic  and  other  relig- 
ious orders  served,  were  so  potent,  that  the 
increase  went  on  with  little  or  no  check.  If 
it  be  true,  as  it  has  been  estimated,  that  there 
was,  at  the  time  of  our  Reformation  in  Eng- 
land, one  monastery  or  religious  house  to 
every  three  thousand  souls,  Wolsey's  policy 
of  diminishing  their  number  is  abundantly 
justified. 

The  enormous  wealth,  also,  of  institutions 
the  members  of  which  were  under  vows  of 
poverty,  was  discreditable  to  them  while  it 


1 68  The  English  Reformation. 

was  injurious  to  the  country.  The  proportion 
of  Church  ownership  of  land  to  other  owner- 
ship in  England  was,  according  to  any  esti- 
mate, astounding,  and  it  was  largely  in  the 
hands  of  conventual  bodies.  The  Church  prop- 
erty, according  to  some  writers,  comprised 
more  than  half  of  the  landed  estates  of  the 
realm;5  and  the  property  of  monasteries,  at 
the  Reformation  era,  covered  from  a  tenth 
to  a  fifth  of  the  soil  of  England.  It  surely 
is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that  all  who 
might  object  to  such  an  accumulation  of 
wealth  in  institutions  the  members  of  which 
were  to  be  the  "  poor  of  Christ,"  must  neces- 
sarily have  been  covetous  or  seekers  after 
spoil,  any  more  than  it  is  to  believe  that  all 
this  wealth  had  always  been  acquired  by  fraud- 
ulent and  rapacious  methods. 

Again,  these  institutions  were  exempt  from 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  bishops,  whose  rights 
were,  to  that  extent,  annihilated;  while  the 
rights  of  the  parochial  clergy — scornfully  called 

5  Spelman,  "Hist,  of  Sacrilege,"  Ed.  1853,  p.  200.  Turner's 
"Middle  Ages,"  vol.  v.  p.  169. 


The  English  Reformation.  169 

by  those  who  arrogated  to  themselves  the  title 
of  religious  the  seculars — as  well  as  of  the 
universities  were  seriously  interfered  with.  A 
General  Council  had,  indeed,  forbidden  in 
terms,  such  exemption,  and  had  also  de- 
creed that  no  monastery  should  be  estab- 
lished in  a  diocese  against  the  will  of  the 
diocesan.8  Associations,  however,  which,  in 
their  zeal  for  strict  obedience,  prefer  to  obey 
superiors  of  their  own  selection  rather  than 
the  authorities  which  "  God  hath  set  in  the 
Church,"7  will  easily  find  methods  by  which 
canons  can  be  overridden  or  evaded,  as  may 
be  most  convenient.  In  this,  case  they  had, 
also,  the  backing  of  the  papal  power. 

Beside  all  this,  and  after  making  every  al- 
lowance for  malicious  slanders  and  unfounded 

e  Chalcedon,  Canons  IV.  and  VIII. 

7  I  Cor.  xii.  28;  comp.  Eph.  ii.  20,  and  iv.  1 1.  These  pas- 
sages taken  in  connection  with  our  Lord's  words  in  John  xv.  16, 
and  xx.  21,  together  with  the  facts  recorded  in  the  Book  of  Acts, 
present  the  Scripture  truth  of  the  origin  of  the  Christian  Ministry, 
as  against  Dr.  Newman's  "development"  theory  on  the  one  side, 
and  the  "  natural  selection"  of  Independency  on  the  other. 


170  The  English  Reformation. 

exaggeration,  the  frightful  corruption  of  morals 
in  many  of  the  monasteries  must  be  admitted. 
I  cannot  quote  the  words  of  Nicolas  de  Cle- 
manges  and  of  Gerson,  the  one  Rector  and 
the  other  Chancellor  of  the  University  of 
Paris;1  but  they  are  as  severe  as  any  words 
of  Cromwell's  agents.  And  when  the  Bishop 
of  Worcester  could  write  to  Wolsey  that  he 
had  "  often  been  struck  with  the  need  in  which 
monasteries  stood  of  reformation,  and  that 
great  care  would  be  required  in  dealing  with 
nunneries,  as  great  abuses  would  be  found  in 
them";9  when  Wolsey,  writing  to  the  King, 
could  say  that  there  were  "  exile  [poor]  and 
small  monasteries  wherein  neither  God  is 
served  nor  religion  kept,"10  we  can  surely 
reach  only  one  conclusion. 

More,  perhaps,  than  all  else,  the  monastic 
system  was,  at  best,  merely  a  human  insti- 
tution; and,  even  if  no  question  is  raised — 

s  See  Hardwick's  "  Middle  Ages,"  p.  367. 
»  DeGigliis:  quoted  by  Blunt,  p.  56. 

w  "Three  Chapters  of  Letters,"  etc.  (Camden  Society  publica- 
tions), p.  i. 


The  English  Reformation.  171 

as  there  well  may  be — touching  the  principles 
on  which  it  was  founded,  there  is  sure  to 
come  "a  point  at  which  the  best  of  human 
institutions  cease  to  be  a  benefit  to  society, 
at  least  in  the  form  in  which  they  were 
originally  founded."1  So  it  was  in  this  in- 
stance. The  system  was  out  of  joint  with 
the  entire  condition  of  things  in  the  six- 
teenth century. 

Nor  were  precedents  for  suppression  lacking. 
To  say  nothing  of  what  Wolsey  had  done  dur- 
ing his  administration,  the  Knights  Templars 
had  been  suppressed  as  far  back  as  1307,  and 
a  number  of  " alien  priories"  had  shared  the 
same  fate  in  1416. 

When,  however,  from  the  abundant  reasons 
for  reformation  and  even  suppression,  we  pass 
to  what  was  actually  done  by  Henry,  acting 
through  his  Vicar-General,  we  can  only  con- 
demn his  methods  and  their  results.  I  know 
that  the  Crown  had,  by  English  law,  a  right 
to  all  unowned  or  confiscated  lands.  I  know 
that  when  possessions  had  been  given  to  a 

i  Blunt,  p.  280. 


172  The  English  Reformation. 

religious  house,  on  certain  defined  conditions, 
then  if  those  conditions  ceased  to  be  fulfilled, 
such  possessions  reverted  to  the  donors  or 
their  heirs.  I  know  that  under  those  laws  of 
the  realm,  part  of  the  monastic  property  might 
have  gone  fairly  to  the  Crown,  and  other  por- 
tions to  the  families  of  founders.  It  is  also 
true  that,  out  of  the  spoils,  six  bishoprics  were 
founded,  five  of  which  remain;  that  some  mon- 
asteries became  collegiate  churches;  that  at 
least  two  hospitals  were  reserved  for  the 
poor;  that  many  abbey  churches  became  par- 
ish churches;  and  that  some  grammar  schools 
were  founded.2 

Let  all  those  abatements  be  made,  and  it 
still  remains  true  that  the  methods  of  visita- 
tion and  the  acts  of  suppression  were  tyranni- 
cally cruel;  that  the  disastrous  appropriations 
of  parochial  revenues  to  monasteries  (which 

2  Perry,  "Eng.  Ch.  History,"  pp.  137,  138.  In  the  thirty 
years  preceding  the  Reformation  more  grammar  schools  were 
founded  hi  England  than  in  three  previous  centuries;  afterwards 
they  increased  even  more  rapidly.  Knight,  "Life  of  Colet," 
pp.  90,  91. 


The  English  Reformation.  173 

made  so  many  appropriated  parishes  sinks  of 
neglect  and  sin),  went  unreformed,  because 
the  appropriation  was  chiefly  made  over  to 
the  Crown;  and  that  Henry  seized  for  him- 
self and  his  minions  what  had  been  given — 
mistakenly  no  doubt  in  many  cases,  but  still 
given — to  the  service  of  God.  In  the  words 
of  Burke,  "  the  lion  having  sucked  the  blood 
of  the  prey,  threw  the  carcass  to  the  jackal 
in  waiting."3 

But  all  this,  I  beg  you  to  observe,  did  not 
touch  the  constitution  of  the  historic  Church 
of  England.  All  this  was  done  by  men  trained 
under  other  influences  than  those  of  the  Re- 
formed Church  of  England,  and  for  whose 
characters — I  repeat  what  has  been  said  before 
— that  Church  is  not  responsible.  And  what 
was  true  then,  let  me  say  in  closing,  is  true 
now.  The  sharpest  and  most  sweeping  con- 
fiscations of  Church  property  which  our  own 
age  has  seen,  in  France,  in  Spain,  in  Italy,  on 
this  Western  Continent,  have  been  made  in 
countries  where  for  generations  previous  the 

3  Letter  to  a  noble  Lord. 


174  The  English  Reformation. 

Roman  Church  held  undisputed  sway.  The 
property  of  that  Church  is  to-day  safest  from 
attack  in  lands  like  England  and  the  United 
States,  where  she  has  neither  trained  the  peo- 
ple nor  shaped  the  laws. 


LECTURE   V. 

DOCTRINE. 


LECTURE    V. 

DOCTRINE. 

T  HAVE  now  considered,  with  perhaps  more 
minuteness  of  detail  than  may  be  deemed 
necessary,  the  constitutional  reform  of  the 
Church  of  England  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
My  reason  for  this  minuteness  is,  that  the 
charges  against  the  English  Church  of  hav- 
ing broken  the  line  of  her  historic  continuity 
and  violently  separated  herself  from  the  past, 
and,  consequently,  of  being  a  new  organization 
dating  only  from  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII., 
and  not  organically  connected  with  that  liv- 
ing and  self-perpetuating  organism  which  the 
Church  of  Christ  is  and  must  be,  are  mainly 
sustained  by  mistakes  or  misrepresentations 
touching  this  constitutional  reform.  It  is  not 
difficult,  I  think,  to  see  why  this  is  so.  A 
Church  which  holds  firmly  the  great  historic 
creeds,  without  mutilation  or  addition,  is  un- 


178  The  English  Reformation. 

assailable  in  regard  to  doctrine,  except  on 
the  ground  that  "  the  faith  once  given  to  the 
Saints "  is  not  a  deposit  to  be  kept,  but  a 
germ  to  be  developed.  A  Church  whose  offices 
of  worship  are  linked  by  manifold  ties  with 
those  of  the  far-off  ages,  retaining  and  repro- 
ducing original  and  essential  elements  and  re- 
moving manifold  incrustations,  can  hardly  be 
attacked  on  that  score  without  attacking,  also, 
a  good  many  other  things  which  might  better 
not  be  assailed.  But  if  a  break  can  be  shewn 
to  have  been  made  in  the  historic  continuity, 
of  the  Church,  involving  an  essential  change 
in  its  constitution,  then  it  may  well  be  thought 
that  every  point  has  been  gained.  Moreover, 
"  glittering  generalities"  of  assertion  in  this  re- 
gard, can  only  be  met  by  those  careful  histori- 
cal examinations  and  discriminations  of  which 
the  majority  of  men  are  not  over-patient4; 

4  Dr.  Newman,  in  his  "Apologia"  (App.  p.  26),  spoke  with 
a  good  deal  of  contempt  of  "antiquarian  arguments;"  and 
afterwards  (in  a  letter  dated  Aug.  5.  1868),  explained  himself 
thus:  "On  giving  myself  to  consider  the  question  [of  Anglican 
Orders],  I  never  have  been  able  to  arrive  at  anything  higher  than 
a  probable  conclusion,  which  is  most  unsatisfactory  except  to 


The  English  Reformation.  179 

which  it  is  easy  to  sneer  at  as  a  mere  piece 
of  antiquarianism;  and  in  which,  as  I  have  inti- 
mated, it  is  equally  easy  to  make  mistakes  and 
misrepresentations  do  the  work  of  historic  fact 
and  logical  argument.  So,  on  the  one  side, 
those  whose  purpose  is  to  convict  the  Church 
of  England  of  the  guilt  of  schism  from  the 
continuous  Church  of  Christ,  and,  on  the 
other,  those  who  desire  to  do  away  with  all 
idea  of  the  Church  as  a  continuous  and  per- 
petuated organism,  agree  in  asserting  such  a 
break  with  the  past,  and  agree  also  in  selecting 
the  constitutional  reforms  of  the  sixteenth 
century  as  their  chief  points  of  attack.5  And 

antiquarians,  who  delight  in  researches  unto  the  past  for  their  own 
sake."  What  Dr.  Newman  here  pleases  to  call  the  antiquarian, 
is  really  nothing  but^he  historical  argument.  If  moral  certainty 
based  on  such  argument  is  not  probable  enough  to  be  accepted, 
then  surely  human  belief  is  shaken  to  its  foundations  and  in  a  fair 
way  to  be  destroyed.  This,  however,  is  only  one  out  of  many 
proofs  of  Dr.  Newman's  sceptical  turn  of  mind.  See,  for  the 
letter,  Lee's  "Orders  of  the  Church  of  England,"  App.  xx. 

5  "  Cranmer  and  his  coadjutors  aimed  at  nothing  more  earnestly 
than  the  preservation  of  the  continuity  of  the  Church.  Shallow 
people  now  regard  them  as  the  conscious  founders  of  a  new  sect." 
Haddan,  "  Remains,"  p.  382. 


180  The  English  Reformation. 

this,  over  and  above  the  consideration  that 
these  reforms  necessarily  came  first  in  time, 
is  the  reason  why  they  have  been  dealt  with 
so  much  at  length. 

Two  other  topics,  indicated  at  the  outset, 
remain;  namely,  Doctrine  and  Worship.  The 
exigencies,  however,  of  time  and  place  permit 
me  to  deal  only  with  the  former;  or  at  least 
with  the  latter  only  so  far  as  it  enters  into  the 
consideration  of  the  former.  Were  it  my  pur- 
pose, as  it  is  not,  to  present  a  historical  view 
of  the  Anglican  Reformation,  such  an  omission 
would  not  be  permissible.  Since,  however,  my 
purpose  has  been  to  treat  of  principles  and 
topics,  selection  among  those  becomes  a  ne- 
cessity. And  I  select  doctrine  rather  than 
worship,  not  only  because  of  its  intrinsic  im- 
portance, but  also  for  the  reason  that  in- 
formation on  the  last  named  subject  is  so 
abundant,  and  so  easily  accessible,  that  its 
omission  makes  what  must,  of  necessity,  be 
incomplete,  less  glaringly  so  than  it  would 
be  were  the  alternative  course  adopted.  The 
omission  must  not  be  understood  as  intimating 


The  English  Reformation.  181 

that  our  reform  in  worship  is  any  less  defen- 
sible than  the  reform  in  doctrine.  Far  from 
it.  I  believe  it  can  be  proved  to  what  is  tan- 
tamount to  a  demonstration,  that  (to  say 
nothing  of  the  Liturgy  proper),  "  Rome  has 
cast  away  her  ancient  offices  while  England 
alone  has  retained  hers;"  and  that  "with  our- 
selves alone,  at  this  day,  there  survives  a  pub- 
lic form  which  retains  the  characteristic  out- 
lines and  essential  organization  of  the  ancient 
offices."6  The  consolidation  of  these  offices, 
taking  the  place  of  such  an  accumulation  of 
them  as  that  the  earliest  ones  for  the  morn- 
ing might  be  said  overnight;  the  digesting 
of  various  uses  into  one  uniform  use  for  the 
whole  realm;  the  clearing  them  of  doctrinal 
errors;  the  omitting  from  them  ceremonial  us- 
ages, the  multiplication  of  which  obscured  and 
made  uncertain  the  central  and  essential  act; 
the  removal  from  them  of  "  uncertain  stones 
and  legends,"  thereby  making  room  for  the  con- 
tinuous reading  of  the  Scriptures;  the  transla- 
tion of  them  into  the  vernacular  English  from 
6  Burgon's  "Letters  from  Rome,"  Letters  x.  xi.  and  xxv. 


1 82  The  English  Reformation^ 

the  Latin, — into  which  tongue  Liturgies  had 
been  translated  because  their  original  Greek 
was  no  longer  "  understanded  of  the  people;" 
these  things  affect  neither  their  structure  nor 
their  inherent  character.  And  this  is,  in  brief, 
what  was  done  with  them  in  the  sixteenth 
century.  With  these  few  words,  which,  never- 
theless, set  forth  what  I  believe  to  be  a  fair 
summary  of  the  Anglican  reform  in  worship, 
and,  also,  indicate  its  great  results,  I  turn  to 
the  special  topic  now  before  us. 

The  first  question  that  meets  us  is  this: 
What  was  the  condition  of  things  in  England 
in  regard  to  doctrine,  at  the  time  when  our 
Reformation  began  to  assert  itself?  And  the 
immediate  answer  to  the  question  is  one  for 
which  we  may  well  be  thankful;  the  Catholic 
Faith  as  expressed  in  the  historic  creeds  re- 
mained intact,  at  least  in"  form.  The  Apostles' 
Creed  stood  as  it  stands  to-day.  The  Confes- 
sion of  Nicaea  had  nothing,  expressly  and  in 
form,  added  to  it.  It  begun  and  ended  as  we 
begin  and  end  it  now.  There  was  appended 
to  it  nothing  in  the  shape  of  those  twelve  arti- 


The  English  Reformation.  183 

cles  which  were  added,  under  the  authority  of 
the  Council  of  Trent  and  Pius  IV.,  after  1564. 
The  Athanasian  Symbol,  contained  "in  the 
Psalm  Quicunque  vult^  remained  unchanged. 
So  far  no  reform  was  needed,  and  so  far  no 
reform  was  attempted.  It  was  no  part  of  the 
purposes  of  our  reformers  "  to  decline  or  vary 
from  the  congregation  of  Christ's  Church  in 
anything  concerning  the  very  articles  of  the 
Catholic  Faith  of  Christendom."8 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  unvarying  persist- 
ency with  which  this  position  has  been  main- 
tained by  our  Reformed  Church  has  not  been 
sufficiently  emphasized  and  insisted  on.  Per- 
haps one  reason  has  been, — for  half  the  trou- 
bles in  the  world  of  human  thought  arise  from 
not  distinguishing  things  that  differ,  —  that 
writers,  forgetting  to  discriminate  among  the 
matters  handled  during  the  progress  of  the 
Reformation,  have  laid  down  arbitrary  periods 
as  covering  the  entire  work  which  really  only 
cover  certain  distinct  parts  of  it.  The  aboli- 
tion of  the  papal  jurisdiction  was,  indeed,  com- 

7  Art.  I.  of  1536.  s  25  Henry  VIII.,  c.  21. 


1 84  The  English  Reformation. 

pleted  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  But  the 
questions  connected  with  the  royal  supremacy 
were  not  finally  adjusted  till  the  reign  of  Eliz- 
abeth.9 The  same  thing  holds  true  of  doctrine; 
which  came  to  its  settlement  in  the  same 
reign.  While  as  to  the  worship  of  the  Church, 
our  view  must  be  extended  over  a  much  wider 
range,  even  to  the  Prayer  Book  of  i662.10  And 

9  It  is  quite  beside  my  purpose  to  speak  of  any  after  unsettle- 
ment  of  the  Elizabethan  settlement.     Any  such  unsettlement  has 
come  rather  from  changes  in  the  relations  of  Parliament  and  the 
Church  than  from  any  change  in  the  relation  of  the  Sovereign. 
So  long  as  Hooker's  celebrated  dictum  remained  true,  "there  is 
not  any  man  of  the  Church  of  England  but  the  same  man  is  also 
a  member  of  the  commonwealth;  nor  any  man  a  member  of  the 
commonwealth  which  is  not  also  of  the  Church  of  England,"  par- 
liamentary legislation  for  the~Church  might  well  enough  be  re- 
garded as  the  act  of  a  lay  synod  of  the  Church.     But  the  moment 
this  ceased  to  be  true,  then  exclusion  of  subjects  from  parliament 
because  they  were  not  members  of  the  English  Church  would  cer- 
tainly appear  to  be  an  invasion  of  their  civil  rights.    And  when  this 
wrong  was  righted  and  they  were  admitted  to  parliament,  then  to 
subject  the  Church  to  the  legislation  of  a  body  so  constituted  would 
as  certainly  appear  to  be  an  invasion  of  the  Church's  rights.     It  is 
a  wretched  process  to  right  one  wrong  by  creating  another. 

10  I  am  speaking,  of  course,  only  of  the  English  Church.     For 
America  we  come  down  to  1789. 


The  English  Reformation.  185 

yet,  "  the  great  theological  documents  of  Hen- 
ry's reign."  which  "  only  mark  a  stage  in  the 
progress  of  opinion,  and  a  stage  which  under- 
went subsequently  much  modification,"  have 
sometimes  been  quoted  as  if  they  were  of  ulti- 
mate and  conclusive  authority  for  doctrine. 
And  in  the  same  way,  "the  precise  stage  of 
opinion  and  practice  that  happened  to  be 
reached  during  the  half-dozen  years  of  the  un- 
settled reign  of  Edward  VI.,"  are  accepted  as 
a  standard,  and  even  termed  our  "  rightful  in- 
heritance"; whereas  they  only  record  the  ten- 
ets of  a  transition  period,  and  can  no  more  be 
accepted  as  a  standard,  than  "  the  precise  point 
reached  in  the  earlier  reign."1  In  the  matter 
of  doctrine,  we  begin  our  survey,  indeed,  in  the 
reign  of  Henry,  but  we  reach  our  conclusions 
only  in  that  of  Elizabeth,  and  in  the  year  1571. 
This  is  the  period  which  I  have  in  mind  in 
speaking  of  the  persistency  with  which  our  re- 
formers kept  always  in  the  forefront  of  all  doc- 
trinal declarations,  "the  very  articles  of  the 
Catholic  Faith  of  Christendom." 

i  Haddan's  "Remains,"  pp.  372,  373. 


1 86  The  English  Reformation. 

There  appeared  in  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII.  three  doctrinal  formularies  with  which 
the  Church  was  directly  concerned,  and  one 
which  is  really  due  to  the  King  and  Par- 
liament only.2  To  this  last  I  shall  have  oc- 
casion to  refer  hereafter.  The  Ten  Articles 
of  1536,  contain  the  first  doctrinal  utterances 
of  the  English  Church  after  the  abolition  of 
the  papal  jurisdiction.  They  were  put  forth 
in  consequence  of  representations,  made  by  the 
Lower  House  in  Convocation,  touching  errors 
" publicly  preached,  printed  and  professed"; 
while  the  detail  of  these  errors  shews  that 
there  were  extreme  opinions  coming  into 
prominence  on  the  reforming  side  that  re- 
quired to  be  looked  after  as  well  as  mediaeval 
corruptions.  Thus  early  are  indications  given 
of  that  double  contest  in  which  our  Church 

2  I  have  not  taken  into  account  the  XIII  Articles  of  1538  which 
exhibit  the  result  of  the  Lutheran  conferences  of  that  year.  Their 
chief  historical  interest  centres  in  the  fact  that  whatever  passed 
from  the  Augsburg  Confession  into  the  Articles  of  1552,  passed 
through  the  medium  of  those  Articles  and  not  directly.  See 
Hard  wick,  "Hist,  of  Articles,"  c.  iv.,  and  App.  ii. 


The  English  Reformation.  187 

has  all  along  been  compelled  to  engage,  that 
"double  witness"  which  it  has  always  been 
her  duty  to  bear. 

People  have  called  her  position  in  this  re- 
gard a  Via  Media,  as  if  she  had  taken  up  a 
process  of  paltering,  trimming  and  dodging 
between  two  opposing  parties.  There  is  no 
truth  in  this  view,  and,  therefore,  the  phrase 
is  as  unmeaning  as  it  is  misleading.  It  may 
declare  a  result,  but  it  certainly  does  not  in- 
dicate the  process  by  which  the  result  was 
reached.  The  principle  adopted  was  that  the 
Faith  was  to  be  kept  "whole  and  undefiled"; 
whole  as  against  subtractions,  undefiled  as 
against  additions.  But  this,  surely,  is  a  posi- 
tive ground,  and  not  a  plan  of  compromise. 
Besides,  what  a  strange  sort  of  compromise 
would  that  be  which  should  bring  on  a  joint 
attack — that  has  lasted  for  three  centuries — 
from  the  very  parties  it  was  intended  to 
conciliate!  Such  a  notion  may  be  the  high- 
est to  which  a  political  historian  is  able, 
to  rise,  but  it  falls,  very  far  short  of  the 
truth. 


1 88  The  English  Reformation. 

Nor  is  the  process  which  was  really  adopted, 
the  line  along  which  our  reformers  moved, 
open  to  the  objection  that  it  is  merely  nega- 
tive. That  is,  surely,  a  very  positive  process 
by  which  attempted  subtractions  from  the 
Faith  are  resisted.  While  the  correction  of 
additions  and  accretions  is  negative  only  in 
form  and  not  at  all  in  result.  Those  were  wise 
words  which  Archbishop  Laud  spoke  to  his 
Jesuit  opponent:  "It  is  a  mere  calumny  that 
we  profess  only  a  negative  religion.  True  it  is, 
and  we  must  thank  Rome  for  it,  our  confes- 
sion must  needs  contain  some  negatives.  .... 
And  in  a  corrupt  time  or  place  it  is  as  nec- 
essary in  religion  to  deny  falsehood  as  to 
assert  and  vindicate  truth;  indeed  this  lat- 
ter can  hardly  be  well  and  sufficiently  done 
but  by  the  former;  an  affirmative  verity  be- 
ing ever  included  in  the  negative  to  a  false- 
hood:' 3 

To  return  to  the  Ten  Articles.  They  were 
drawn  up,  as  I  have  stated,  by  Convocation, 

3  Laud's  "  Conference  with  Fisher,"  p.  128. 


The  English   Reformation.  189 

on  the  representations  of  the  Lower  House, 
and  by  the  royal  command.  And  the  point 
to  which  I  desire  here  to  call  special  atten- 
tion is,  that  the  first  article  declares,  that 
"the  chief  and  principal  articles  of  our  faith" 
are  "  comprehended  in  the  whole  body  and 
canon  of  the  Bible  and  also  in  the  three 
creeds  or  symbols;"  and  that  those  creeds 
are  to  be  interpreted  "according  to  the  self- 
same sentence  and  interpretation,  which  the 
words  of  the  self-same  creeds  or  symbols  do 
purport,  and  the  holy  approved  doctors  do 
entreat  and  defend  the  same."  There  is  a 
reference  also,  not  only  to  the  Councils  of 
Nicaea  and  Constantinople,  but  to  those  of 
Ephesus  and  Chalcedon,  "and  all  others  sith 
that  time  in  any  point  consonant  to  the  same!' 
In  these  last  words,  you  will  observe,  there 
is  expressed  a  very  important  limitation  of 
any  action  of  councils  subsequent  to  the  four 
expressly  named. 

These  words,  and  therefore  the  Article  it- 
self, clearly  contain,  by  direct  assertion  or 
unquestionable  implication,  the  following  prop- 


igo  The  English  Reformation. 

ositions.  First,  that  all  things  necessary  to 
be  believed  are  contained  in  Holy  Scripture; 
secondly,  that  these  fundamental  verities  are 
summed  up  in  the  historic  creeds,  which  are, 
therefore,  capable  of  being  "proved  by  most 
certain  warrants  of  Holy  Scripture;"4  thirdly, 
that  the  creeds  are  to  be  interpreted  in  a 
natural  and  not  a  non-natural  sense,  in  other 
words,  that  their  meaning  must  come  out  from 
them  and  not  be  imported  into  them;  and 
fourthly,  that  the  testimony  of  the  "approved 
doctors  of  the  Church"  must  sustain  any  af- 
firmed interpretation. 

Now,  under  these  rules,  questions  of  detail 
may,  no  doubt,  arise.  It  may  be  asked, 
what  books  make  up  the  Canon  of  Script- 
ure ?  What  is  the  proper  wording  of  the 
creeds  ?  What  is  the  true  signification  of 
such  and  such  phrases  ?  But  these,  and  many 
other  possible  questions,  relate  only  to  de- 
tails, and  leave  the  principles  announced  quite 
untouched.  Nor  have  those  principles  (what- 
ever changes  in  some  details  there  may  have 

*  Article  VIII.  of  the  Thirty-nine. 


The  English  Reformation.  191 

been),  been  changed  among  us  for  more  than 
three  centuries  and  a  half.6 

5  The  story  of  the  publication  of  these  Articles  is  curious.  It  il- 
lustrates the  King's  estimate  of  his  own  powers  as  a  theologian  and 
the  way  in  which  he  tried  to  arrogate  everything  to  himself.  Crom- 
well, as  Vicar-General  and  the  royal  mouth-piece,  informed  Convo- 
cation that  though  his  majesty  "by  his  excellent  learning  knoweth 
these  controversies  well  enough,  yet  he  will  suffer  no  common  alter- 
ation but  by  the  consent  of  you  and  of  his  whole  parliament.*'  One 
can  imagine  the  Vicar-General  uttering  this  precious  bit  of  brag- 
gadocio. When,  however,  it  comes  to  appear  in  the  preface  to  the 
Articles,  as  published,  it  is  softened  down  into  a  much  more  modest 
statement.  "  We  have  not  only  in  our  own  person  at  many  times 
taken  great  pains,  study,  labors  and  travails,  but  have  also  caused 
our  bishops  and  other  the  most  discreet  and  learned  men  of  our 
clergy  of  this  our  whole  realm,  to  be  assembled  hi  Convocation, 
for  the  full  debasement  and  quiet  determination  of  the  same." 

Then  again,  the  title  of  the  Articles  as  they  left  Convocation — 
the  MS.  is  in  the  British  Museum — was,  "Articles  about  religion 
set  out  by  the  Convocation  and  published  by  the  King's  author- 
ity." But  Henry  garbled  the  title  in  the  printing  to  read,  "Arti- 
cles devised  by  the  King's  Majesty,"  etc.  He  left,  however,  in 
the  preface  the  above-quoted  passage  which  convicts  his  self-made 
title  of  falsehood.  The  simple  truth  is  that  Convocation  drew 
up  the  Articles,  and  they  were  then  published  by  royal  authority. 
They  are  no  more  the  King's,  even  if  he  suggested  some  changes 
before  final  action,  than  the  decrees  of  Nice  are  Constantine's. 
Lloyd's  "Formularies,"  pp.  xvi.  4.  Jenkyns's  "Cranmer,"  vol. 
i.  p.  xiv.  ff.  Hardwick's  "  Articles,"  etc.,  c.  iii. 


192  The  English  Reformation. 

"The  Institution  of  a  Christian  Man,"  drawn 
up  by  a  Commission  of  bishops  and  other  di- 
vines appointed  by  the  Crown,  and  published 
in  1537,  and  "The  Necessary  Doctrine  and 
Erudition  for  any  Christian  Man,"  which  was 
the  work  of  Convocation  in  1543,  follow  in 
the  same  line  and  begin  with  an  exposition 
of  the  Apostles'  Creed;  thus  continuing  the 
prominent  position  given  to  the  one  historic 
Faith.  These  are  the  Formularies  of  Henry's 
reign. 

In  none  of  them,  however,  does  the  prom- 
inence come  out  so  distinctly,  in  none  of 
them  is  the  Catholic  Faith  set  forth  with 
such  fulness,  as  in  the  XLII  Articles  of  1552 
and  the  XXXIX  of  1562  and  I5/I.6  The  last 
named  of  these  formularies  is  more  complete 
than  the  former,  because  it  contains  an  Arti- 

6  In  the  XI  Articles,  set  forth  by  the  Archbishops  and  Bish- 
ops in  1559,  the  first  contains  a  profession  of  belief  in  the  Holy 
Trinity,  and  the  formulary  falls,  so  far,  into  line  with  the  other 
formularies  mentioned.  It  was  never,  however,  acted  on  synodi- 
cally,  and  was  merely  an  ad  interim.  In  Ireland  it  continued 
in  use  till  1615. 


The  English  Reformation.  193 

cle  concerning  the  Holy  Ghost  which  did  not 
appear  in  the  formulary  of  1552.  In  the  first 
five  Articles  of  1562  not  only  are  the  defi- 
nitions of  Nicaea  and  Constantinople  set  forth, 
but  those  also  of  Ephesus  and  Chalcedon; 
and  they  contain,  standing  at  the  forefront 
of  all  else,  a  clear,  balanced  and  exhaustive 
dogmatic  statement  touching  the  Trinity  in 
Unity  in  its  substance  and  its  persons,  and  the 
person  and  natures  of  our  Lord,  His  incar- 
nation, passion  and  resurrection.  The  Church 
of  England  refused  to  consider  any  theologi- 
cal question  from  any  other  than  that  stand- 
point. "  Before  all  things  the  Catholic  Faith." 
So  speaks  our  English  Reformation. 

Just  here,  let  me  say  a  word  as  to  the  Con- 
fessions and  Formularies  put  forth,  during  this 
period,  on  the  continent  of  Europe.  There  is 
a  marked  difference,  in  the  characteristic  now 
under  consideration,  between  the  Formularies 
of  the  Saxon  school  of  Reformers  and  those 
of  the  Swiss  school;  a  difference  not  without 
significancy.  The  former,  largely  shaped  by 
Luther, — the  Augsburg  and  Saxon  Confessions 


194  The  English  Reformation. 

— much  more  nearly  resemble  our  Formularies 
than  the  latter — the  Helvetic  and  the  Belgic, 
— which  bear  the  impress  of  the  mind  of  Cal- 
vin. The  Augsburg  is,  indeed,  fuller  and  more 
distinct  than  the  Saxon  Confession ;  yet  it 
thrusts  in  between  its  declaration  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity  and  its  setting  forth  of 
the  person  and  natures  of  our  Lord,  a  view 
of  original  sin  and  its  consequences,  thus  mar- 
ring, so  far,  the  unity  and  coherence  of  its 
statement  of  the  Faith.7  On  the  other  hand 
the  Helvetic  Confession  relegates  its  continu- 
ous statement  of  the  Faith  to  its  preface, 
(where  it  quotes  the  Decree  of  Gratian  Val- 
entinian  and  Theodosius,  and  the  Creed  of 
Damasus),  touches  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
only  in  its  third  article,  and  is  silent  as  to  the 
eternal  generation  of  the  Son,  and  the  person 
and  natures  of  Christ,  till  its  eleventh  article 
is  reached.  The  Belgic  Confession  begins  with 
a  simple  declaration  of  the  existence  and  unity 
of  God,  proceeds  to  discuss  various  questions 
concerning  Holy  Scripture  and  our  knowledge 

7  The  same  peculiarity  is  observable  in  the  XIII  Articles  of  1538. 


The  English  Reformation.  195 

of  God,  and  has  nothing  to  say  about  the  Faith 
before  its  eighth  article.8 

Two  things,  then,  are  very  observable  in  all 
these  Formularies;  the  first, — about  which  no 
more  need  be  said  than  has  been  said  already 
— that  the  whole  Faith,  in  its  due  order  and 
completeness,  is  not  made,  as  it  was  by  our 
Reformers,  the  one  unvarying  standpoint  from 
which  all  questions  then  under  discussion  were 
approached;  the  second,  that  these  fundamen- 
tal and  settled  verities  are  mixed  up  with 
questions  and  discussions  of  the  hour,  and  are 
not  kept  in  that  position,  not  of  prominence 
only,  but  of  separation  also,  which  is  their  due. 

From  all  this  only  one  result  can  follow. 
The  time  of  its  coming  may  be  longer  or 
shorter  as  circumstances  may  hasten  or  re- 
tard it.  But  sooner  or  later  it  assuredly  will 
come,  and  will  bring  with  it  confusion  and 
disaster.  The  Faith  degraded  to  the  level 
of  human  speculations,  reasonings  and  con- 
clusions, may  be  made,  for  a  time,  to  give 

8  See  " Sylloge  Confessionum"  Oxford,  1804,  and  Augusti's, 
"Corpus  Librorum  Symbolicorum"  etc. 


196  The  English  Reformation. 

to  them — at  •  least  apparently  and  in  men's 
apprehension — somewhat  of  its  own  estab- 
lished certainty  and  changelessness.  But  this 
unnatural  condition  will  never  last.  In  time 
this  action  will  be  reversed.  Men  will  cease 
to  attribute  the  assured  certainty  of  the  set- 
tled Faith  to  these  speculations,  reasonings 
and  conclusions.  Nor  will  they  stop  there. 
They  will  carry  back  the  uncertainties  of  these 
last  named  things  to  the  Faith  itself,  they 
can  do  nothing  else.  And  then,  when  the 
congeries  of  human  opinions  collapses  and 
breaks  up,  how  can  it  be  otherwise  than  that 
the  Faith  should  be  involved  in  the  common 
ruin  ?  What  can  the  result  be  but  a  "  swept 
and  garnished"  house,  ready  to  become  the 
abode  of  those  demons  of  denial  and  unbe- 
lief whose  "name  is  Legion"?  The  story  of 
human  belief  and  unbelief  is  full  of  examples 
that  illustrate  this  position.  Look  at  England 
for  the  fifteen  years  preceding  1660.  Look  at 
France  to-day,  where  ultramontanism  identify- 
ing itself,  and  all  the  loads  it  has  laid  upon 
the  Faith,  with  Christianity,  has  carried  Chris- 


I 


The  English  Reformation.  197 

tianity;with  itself  in  its  downfall,  and  brought 
so  many  persons  to  the  conviction  that  if  a 
man  is  not  an  ultramontane  he  must  needs  be 
an  atheist.  What,  indeed,  may  not  be  in  store 
for  a  Church  which  has  overladen  the  Faith 
with  such  vast  systems  of  belief,  and  taught 
people  "that  to  believe  in  Christ"  involves 
all  such  belief  as  well  ?  Why  should  not  the 
downfall  of  such  systems  of  belief,  a  down- 
fall which  must  come  if  ever  truth  is  to  tri- 
umph, "  bury  in  its  ruins  the  belief  in  Jesus  " 
also?9 

There  is  always  a  tendency  in  the  human 
mind  to  separate  one  doctrine  of  the  Faith, 
or  one  matter  of  opinion  from  its  proper  posi- 
tion and  relations,  to  push  it  into  undue  prom- 
inence, and  fill  with  it  the  field  of  vision.  Ques- 
tions as  to  God's  sovereignty,  or  man's  free-will, 
or  human  depravity,  or  Baptism,  or  the  Eu- 
charist, have  thus  been  made,  exclusively, 
topics  for  study  and  instruction.  Other  things 
have  been  passed  by.  And,  therefore,  even 
if  the  teaching  has,  in  itself,  been  true — as  it 
i>  Pusey's  "  Eirenicon,"  p.  242,  ff. 


198  The  English  Reformation. 

has  not  always  been — it  has  still  been  dis- 
astrous, -because  it  has  violated,  completely 
and  shamefully,  the  great  and  divinely  sanc- 
tioned law  that  we  are  to  teach  "  according 
to  the  analogy  of  the  Faith." 10  So  men's  im- 
aginations get  mixed  up  with  fundamental  ver- 
ities, and  even  truths  are  dislocated  and  dis- 
torted till  they  take  on  somewhat  of  the  same 
character.  To  use  the  words  of  Bishop  An- 
drewes,  spoken,  indeed,  of  a  period  later  than 
the  Reformation,  but  true  then  and  true  in 
our  own  time:  "This  is  the  disease  of  our 
age  and  the  just  complaint  we  make  of  it; 
that  there  hath  been  a  good  riddance  of  im- 
ages; but  for  imaginations,  they  be  daily 
stamped  in  great  number,  and  instead  of  the 
old  images,  set  up,  deified  and  worshipped." 
Against  all  such  ill-doing,  the  continuous 

*•  Rom.  xii.  6,  "that  is,"  says  the  Bp.  of  Lincoln,  "according 
to  the  general  symmetry  and  harmony  of  the  whole  body  of 
Christian  Doctrine  and  according  to  the  relation  or  proportion 
(dvaXoyia)  of  each  special  doctrine  preached  to  that  entire 
body  of  doctrine."  See,  also,  Hooker,  book  iii.  i.  5;  and  Bp. 
Andrewes,  "  Sermon  on  Worshipping  Imaginations." 


The  English  Reformation.  199 

action  of  our  Reformers  from  1536  to  1571 
is  a  continuous  protest.  It  has  given  to  the 
Church  of  England  with  the  National  Churches 
founded  'by  her  and  in  communion  with  her, 
the  glorious  position  of  holding,  and  "  holding 
forth,"  the  "  entire  Faith  such  as  our  Lord  left 
it  with  the  Apostles,  to  evangelize  the  world." 
Some  of  her  sons  may  have  abandoned  her  po- 
sition and  their  own  plain  line  of  duty.  If 
they  have,  they  have  simply  been  unfaithful 
to  their  privileges  and  responsibilities.  There 
may  have  been,  there  have  been,  those  who 
were  "  suckled  at  her  breast,"  and  who  yet 
"have  written  concerning  her  even  as  men 
might  write  that  were  hired  to  make  a  case 
against  her,  and  by  an  adverse  instinct  in  the 
selection  of  evidence,  and  a  severity  of  con- 
struction such  as  no  history  of  the  deeds  of 
man  can  bear,  have  often,  too  often  in  these 
last  years,  put  her  to  an  open  shame."  Faith- 
less and  froward  children,  we  must  remem- 
ber, are  no  unwonted  spectacles  in  families 
or  churches.  But  oh  !  how  many  have  there 
been  in  generations  past,  how  many  are  there 


2OO  The  English  Reformation. 

now,  who  understand  the  full  richness  of  this 
precious  heritage;  who  comprehend  the  full 
glory  of  the  position  in  which  the  Reforma- 
tion placed  the  Church  three  centuries  ago, 
a  position  which  shall  bring  powers  for  ser- 
vice in  ^the  future  that  will  overpass  all  pos- 
sibilities of  service  in  the  past;  and  who,  be- 
cause "of  all  this,  are  ready  "  unshrinkingly  to 
devote  themselves  to  defending  within  her 
borders  the  full  and  whole  doctrine  of  the 
Cross,  with  that  mystic  symbol  gleaming 
down  on  them  from  Heaven,  now  as  ever 
showing  forth  its  inscription,  *  In  this  sign 
shalt  thou  conquer.'"1 

When  we  turn  from  this  prominent  exhi- 
bition of  the  one  Catholic  Faith  which,  thus 
far,  we  have  been  considering,  to  doctrines 
and  opinions  which  were  special  topics  for 
examination  and  discussion  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  we  shall  find  the  formularies  of  our 
reformation  remarkable  for  their  moderation. 
Archbishop  Bramhall  takes  special  note  of 
this  characteristic  and  presses  it  with  ear- 
i  Gladstone,  "On  the  Supremacy,"  p.  86,  ff. 


The  English  Reformation.  201 

nestness  and  cogency.  He  makes  "  three  con- 
ditions of  a  lawful  reformation — just  grounds, 
due  moderation,  and  sufficient  authority."  And 
he  says  of  the  Romanists,  "  They  fear  our  mod- 
eration more  than  the  violent  opposition  of 
others."2 

Possibly  moderation  is  not  a  word  much  in 
favor  in  our  day.  And,  no  doubt,  it  may  be 
used  to  designate  tempers  and  methods  that 
are  the  reverse  of  commendable.  When  it  is 
made  the  synonym  of  indifference,  careless- 
ness, lukewarmness,  cowardice,  time-serving, 
or  suchlike  things,  it  can  only  be  condemned. 
When,  however,  it  is  used  to  signify  that  tem- 
per of  forbearance,  that  "  reasonableness  of 
dealing,  wherein  not  strictness  of  legal  right 
but  consideration  for  one  another  is  the  rule 
of  practice,"  that  looking  at  a  debatable  ques- 
tion on  all  its  sides,  that  willingness  to  modify 
"the  unhuman  absolute  "of  a  relentless  logic 
by  the  manifold  limitations  and  conditions 
which  that  refuses  to  consider,  then  we  reach 
the  iTtietneti  of  St.  Paul,  of  which  he  says, 
2  "Works,"  pp.  216,  957;  Dublin,  1677. 


2O2  The  English  Reformation. 

"Let    your    moderation    be    known    unto    all 
men."3 

There  are,  of  course,  large  classes  of  persons 
who,  influenced  by  various  causes,  will  refuse 
to  consider  the  distinctions  here  insisted  on, 
and  will  reject  any  and  all  ideas  of  moderation 
in  reform  as  unworthy  and  even  contemptible. 
It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  attempt  to  enu- 
merate these  classes,  or  to  go  into  a  statement 
of  the  processes  by  which  they  reach  their 
conclusions.  However  they  may  differ  in  oth- 
er matters  there  are  two  things  in  which  they 
agree.  They  always  seek  for  the  truth  in  one 
or  the  other  of  two  extremes,  and  that  by 
inferring  "  conclusion  from  conclusion,  and 
projecting  assumptions  as  if  they  were  prem- 
ises";4 and  they  are  always  ready  to  shelter 
themselves  under  the  cover  of  that  modera- 
tion the  benefit  of  which  they  refuse  to  others 
and  against  which  they  so  passionately  pro- 


3  The  word  is  not  from  eiKG),  to  yield,  but  from  iixod,  that 
which  is  becoming.     See  Alford  and  Wordsworth  on  Phil.  iv.  5, 
and  I  Tim.  iii.  3. 

4  Liddon's  "  Speech  on  the  late  Bishop  of  Brechin." 


The  English  Reformation.  203 

test.  What  was  commended  by  such  men  as 
Hooker,  Saravia,  Bramhall,  Hammond,  and 
Sanderson  can,  however,  hardly  be  treated  as  a 
cowardly  devise  of  self-seeking  time-servers.5 

This  moderation  appears  in  a  very  striking 
form  when  we  contrast  the  Decrees  of  Trent 
with  our  Articles  of  Religion.  In  the  former 
all  canons  of  doctrine,  in  which  so  many  med- 
iaeval speculations  are  solidified,  end  with  an 
Anathema.  Of  these  there  are  no  less  than 
one  hundred  and  forty-one  !  And  they  reach 
down  even  to  those  who  question  the  canoni- 
calness  of  the  Apocrypha  or  print  works  that 
have  not  been  duly  examined  and  approved. 
One  may  be  pardoned  for  involuntarily  recall- 
ing the  words  of  the  Psalmist,  "  He  clothed 
himself  with  cursing  like  as  with  his  garment."6 

On  the  other  hand,  in  our  Articles,  whether 

s  See  the  passages,  with  many  others,  in  Puller's  "Moderation 
of  the  Church  of  England,"  c.  xvi. 

6  "Whoever  incurs  an  anathema,  is  cut  off  from  the  commun- 
ion of  the  faithful;  is  regarded  as  outside  the  way  of  salvation  and 
in  a  state  of  damnation;  nor  may  any  of  the  faithful  have  any 
intercourse  with  him,"  Bergier,  "Dictionaire  de  Theologie" 


2O4  The  English  Reformation. 

those  of  1552  or  of  1562  and  '71,  there  is  but 
one  anathema;  and  that  one  is  taken  from 
Holy  Scripture.  It  is  an  echo  of  St.  Paul's 
words  in  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  where 
he  says  of  man  or  angel  who  shall  preach 
a  Gospel  different  from  that  which  he  has 
preached  (resting  salvation  on  "  works  of  law  " 
and  not  on  the  grace  of  God  in  Jesus  Christ), 
"let  him  be  anathema."7  The  XVIIIth  Ar- 
ticle, in  which  this  single  anathema  occurs, 
deals  with  the  same  utter  subversion  of  the 
Gospel  which  St.  Paul  condemns,  and  simply 
repeats  his  words.8 

i  Gal.  i.  8,  9. 

8  The  careful  wording  of  the  Article  deserves  notice.  It  does 
not  at  all  assert,  absolutely,  that  no  man  can  or  will  be  saved  in 
"the  law  or  sect  which  he  professeth,"  but  that  he  cannot  be 
saved  by  what  he  does  in  it,  without  regard  to  the  sacrifice  of 
Jesus  Christ.  This  was  the  error  which,  in  regard  to  the 
Mosaic  Law,  the  false  teachers  enforced  upon  the  Galatians.  It 
may  be  further  observed,  that  the  moderation  of  the  English  Church 
appears  in  later  formularies;  in  the  Convocation  Book,  where  the 
strongest  condemnation  is  expressed  in  the  words  "  he  doth  greatly 
err,"  and  in  the  Canons  of  1603-4,  fifteen  of  which  (out  of  the 
one  hundred  and  forty-one)  impose,  indeed,  excommunication; 
but  there  is  nowhere  any  anathema. 


The  English  Reformation.  205 

Besides  this  general  moderation  in  temper, 
there  is  also  a  noticeable  moderation  in  state- 
ment touching  points  in  controversy  in  the 
sixteenth  century.  There  are  two  documents, 
one  belonging  to  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII. 
and  another  which  appeared  late  in  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth,  that  very  strikingly,  though  by 
contrast,  illustrate  this  assertion.  The  former 
of  these  documents  was  drawn  up  in  the  in- 
terests of  what  we  should  now  call  Romanism, 
the  other  in  the  interests  of  Calvinism.  Both 
are  worth  examining.  They  indicate  the  two 
great  disturbing  elements  in  the  English  Ref- 
ormation. 

There  must,  of  course,  from  the  beginning, 
have  been  those  who  opposed  reform  in  Eng- 
land. They  may  be  roughly,  but  I  think 
sufficiently,  classified  as  follows:  those  who 
deprecated  any  change  whatever,  those  who 
accepted  the  abolition  of  the  papal  jurisdiction 
but  would  have  stopped  with  that,  and  those 
who  acquiesced  in  the  Ten  Articles  and  the 
Institution,  but  would  have  gone  no  further. 
Here,  obviously,  is  the  nucleus,  perhaps  even 


206  The  English  Reformation. 

more,  of  a  reactionary  party.  Various  things 
and  events  contributed  to  swell  the  numbers 
of  such  a  party  and  increase  its  power.  The 
anarchical  teachings  of  anabaptists  and  other 
sectaries,  the  jealousies  occasioned  by  the  con- 
ferences with  continental  reformers,  especially 
the  visit  of  the  "  German  orators"  in  1538,  the 
dissolution  of  the  monasteries,  sympathy  for 
Katharine  of  Aragon  and  the  Princess  Mary, 
the  passing  of  the  Act  of  Succession  and  the 
executions  of  More  and  Fisher;  these,  and  oth- 
er things  that  need  not  be  mentioned,  helped 
to  build  up  a  party  of  reaction.  Henry  must 
have  given  it  his  sympathy;  for  the  document 
in  which  reaction  culminated  is  said  to  have 
been  carried  through  Parliament  by  the  per- 
sonal presence  and  influence  of  the  King  him- 
self. 

The  Act  was  passed  in  1539,  and  was  known 
as  the  Six  Articles,  or,  more  familiarly  the  Six- 
stringed  Whip.  These  are  due  to  the  King 
and  the  Parliament.  They  were  not  drawn 
up  by  Convocation,*  and  only  received  from 
that  body  a  formal  sanction.  "  It  was  a  new 


The  English  Reformation.  207 

Heresy  Act,  proceeding  not  from  the  Church, 
though  sanctioned  as  to  doctrine  by  the  South- 
ern Convocation;  but  from  Parliament,  at  the 
commandment  of  the  King,  and  on  the  in- 
stance of  a  layman."9 

9  Dixon,  "  History,"  etc.  vol.  ii.  p.  122.  The  history  of  the 
Act  is  not  a  little  perplexed.  It  would  seem  that  in  April  1539, 
the  Lord  Chancellor,  Audley,  stated  to  Parliament  the  King's  de- 
sire that  "diversity  of  religious  opinions  should  be  banished  from 
his  dominions,"  together  with  a  proposal  that  a  committee  of  the 
Upper  House  should  be  appointed  "to  examine  opinions  and  to 
report  their  decisions  to  the  whole  Parliament."  This  Committee 
was  appointed  on  May  5th,  and  consisted  of  the  Vicar-General, 
and  twelve  or  eight  bishops — accounts  differ.  The  Vicar- General 
left  the  discussion  to  the  prelates,  who  came  to  no  agreement  in 
regard  to  the  six  questions  submitted  to  them;  which  were  drawn 
up  by  the  King  himself,  and  undoubtedly  contained  the  embryon 
if  not  the  matter  of  the  Six  Articles.  After  ten  days'  delay,  the 
disagreement  of  the  prelates  was  announced,  and  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk  laid  the  six  questions  before  the  House  of  Lords,  with  the 
mot  d*  ordre,  "Let  the  matters  in  dispute  be  determined  openly 
and  freely  in  full  Parliament;  and  let  a  penal  statute  be  passed," 
etc.  A  debate  followed:  on  the  third  day  of  which  the  King  ap- 
peared in  person,  and  took  part  in  the  discussion  in  favor  of  the 
proposed  Act.  Then,  on  May  23d,  a  Committee  of  the  bishops 
was  appointed  to  confer  with  the  King  and  yielded  to  him  at  last. 
Upon  this,  two  committees  were  appointed  to  draw  up  two  forms 
of  a  statute,  one  of  which  should  be  passed  by  Parliament.  The 


208  The  English  Reformation. 

The  "  ferocious  penalties "  inflicted  by  the 
act  I  need  not  state,  because  I  am  not  writ- 
ing its  history,  but  calling  attention  to  the 

King,  however,  appears  to  have  finally  drawn  up  the  statute  him- 
self ;  and  it  was  passed,  after  some  additions  by  the  Commons,  in 
June. 

"Meanwhile,"  says  Mr.  Blunt,  "the  six  questions  had  been 
submitted,  on  June  2d,  to  a  pro  forma  meeting  of  Convocation 
[the  Southern] ,  in  which  the  prolocutor  was  the  only  member  of 
the  Lower  House  present ',  and  they  were  all  answered  in  the  affir- 
mative." On  the  other  hand  Canon  Perry  asserts,  that  "the 
Convocation  of  Canterbury  was  consulted  on  the  six  points,  and 
answered  them  all  affirmatively:  Bishops  Latimer  and  Shaxton, 
Doctors  Crome  and  Tailour  being  dissentient." 

Whichever  of  these  accounts  is  correct,  Convocation,  and  there- 
fore the  Church,  is  not  responsible  for  the  matter  or  the  form  of 
the  Six  Articles.  If  it  acted  only  pro  forma,  as  Mr.  Blunt  says, 
it  did  not  really  act  at  all.  If  it  did  formally  accept  foregone  con- 
clusions and  definitions,  they  were  only  forced  upon  it,  and  did 
not  proceed  from  it. 

Mr.  Blunt  thinks  that  Cranmer  voted  for  the  Act.  "  Reforma- 
tion," p.  475.  Dr.  Hook  takes  the  same  view.  "Lives,"  etc. 
New  Series,  vol.  ii.  p.  46.  But  it  is  worth  while  to  compare 
Todd's  statements  in  his  "Life  of  Cranmer,"  vol.  i.  p.  272,  ff; 
and  what  Cranmer  himself  said  to  the  Devonshire  rebels,  and  in 
his  answer  to  Gardiner,  Jenkyns's  "  Remains, "  vol.  ii.  p.  212; 
iii.  p.  366.  The  Act  was  mitigated  in  1543,  and  finally  repealed 
in  the  first  year  of  Edward  VI. 


The  English  Reformation.  209 

immoderate  and  excessive  form  of  its  state- 
ments. Its  six  provisions  embraced  the  anni- 
hilation of  the  elements  in  the  Eucharist;  the 
sufficiency,  by  the  law  of  God,  of  communion 
in  one  kind;  the  forbidding  by  the  same  law y 
of  marriage  to  priests;  the  obligation  of  vows 
by  the  same  law\  private  masses  to  be  con- 
tinued as  agreeable  to  God's  law;  auricular 
confession  to  be  retained  as  expedient  and 
necessary.  A  balder,  harsher,  more  extreme 
statement  of  the  doctrines  maintained — with 
the  exception,  perhaps,  of  the  last — cannot 
be  imagined.  There  is  an  unrelenting  exact- 
ness in  it  which  may  commend  itself  to  those 
who  clamor  for  definitions  of  everything,  but 
which  is  an  outrage  on  Scripture,  antiquity, 
and  right  reason  itself. 

So  much  for  the  first  document,  let  me  now 
speak  of  the  second;  the  one  put  forth  in  the 
interests  of  Calvinism,  fifty-six  years  later  on, 
the  Lambeth  Articles  of  1595.  Its  history  is 
an  important  one,  and  it  requires  something 
in  the  way  of  preface. 

There    is   not   the   smallest    evidence   that 


2io  The  English  Reformation. 

those  five  opinions — mostly  metaphysical  spec- 
ulations— which  are  known  as  the  Five  points 
of  Calvinism,  had  attracted  any  special  at- 
tention in  England  when  the  "  Ten  Articles" 
of  1536  and  the  "Institution"  of  1537  ap- 
peared. They  could  not  have  been  much  in 
men's  minds,  for  Calvin's  "Institutes"  were 
not  published  till  1536,  and  time  enough  had 
not  elapsed  before  the  above-named  formu- 
laries were  issued  for  his  speculations  to  have 
gained  much  influence.  In  neither  formulary  do 
we  find  any  trace  of  them.  Predestination  and 
reprobation  are  not  so  much  as  mentioned,  and 
all  the  other  parts  of  Calvin's  system  are  dis- 
tinctly contradicted.  The  Six  Articles  of  1539 
are,  indeed,  not  unlike  Calvin's  five,  in  severity 
of  temper  and  excess  of  definition,  but  the 
two  formularies  have  nothing  else  in  common. 
When  we  come,  however,  to  the  "  Necessary 
Erudition,"  in  1543,  it  becomes  obvious  that 
those  who  drew  up  that  Formulary  had  Cal- 
vin's system  in  their  minds;  and  it  is  equally 
obvious  that  they  intended  to  reject  it.  I  can- 
not quote  passages  at  length.  But  no  man  can 


The  English  Reformation.  211 

read  that  work,  and  not  see  that  the  severest 
and  most  repulsive  doctrines  of  Calvin  are  de- 
nied in  it,  and  denied  not  only  pointedly,  but 
with  a  certain  degree  of  sharpness. 

This  brings  us  to  the  Forty-two  Articles  of 
1552,  and  the  Thirty-nine  of  1562  and  '71.  Lord 
Chatham's  thread-bare  jest — which  speaks  more 
for  his  skill  as  an  epigrammatist  than  for  his 
knowledge  of  Theology — that  "the  Church  of 
England  had  a  Popish  liturgy,  a  Calvinistic 
creed,  and  an  Arminian  clergy,"  has,  probably, 
shaped  a  good  many  peoples'  opinions  con- 
cerning these  Articles.  And  we  must  admit, 
that  if  articles  drawn  up  principally  by  four 
persons,10  not  one  of  whom  was  a  Calvinist; 
articles  which  distinctly  deny  or  pointedly 
omit  every  point  of  Calvinism,  unless  we  ex- 
cept the  single  one  of  election  to  life;  which 
state  that  one  point  in  language  that  is  not 
Calvinistic,  accompanying  it  with  two  cautions 

10  Cranmer,  Latimer,  Hooper  and  Ridley.  See  Hard  wick's 
"History  of  the  Articles,"  c.  v.  As  for  Hooper,  See  Bishop 
Bull's  "Harmonia  Apostolica,"  Works,  vol.  iv.  pp.  448,  453, 
454,  457- 


212  The  English  Reformation. 

which  no  Calvinist  can  accept,  and  two  canons 
of  interpretation  which  dismiss  the  Calvinistic 
theory  to  the  regions  of  abstract,  presumptu- 
ous and  profitless  speculation;  that  if  such  arti- 
cles can  fairly  be  called  Calvinistic,  then  those 
we  are  considering  can.  But  they  can  be  so 
termed  on  no  other  grounds  and  in  no  other 
way.  So  matters  stood  at  the  death  of  Ed- 
ward VI. 

The  accession  of  Mary  drove  many  of  the 
reforming  party  to  the  Continent.  When  these 
returned,  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  many  of 
them  had  abandoned  the  principles  and  doc- 
trines of  the  English  Reformation,  and  imbibed 
the  views  of  the  reformers  of  the  Continent 
touching  the  Constitution  the  Doctrine  and 
the  worship  of  the  Church,  and  more  especially 
the  theories  of  Calvin, — that  Protestant  scho- 
lasticism which  took  the  place  of  the  medi- 
aeval scholasticism  in  so  many  minds.  Things 
came  to  a  head  when  two  members  of  the 
University  of  Cambridge  preached  against  this 
foreign  importation,  and  defended  the  plain  as- 
sertions of  the  Articles  of  Religion.  From  the 


The  English  Reformation.  213 

controversy  that  ensued,  came  forth  the  Lam- 
beth Articles  of  1595,  bristling  all  over  with 
the  freshly  burnished  points  of  Calvinism,  "  like 
quills  upon  the  fretful  porcupine;"  a  Formu- 
lary, concerning  the  statements  of  which  Arch- 
deacon Hardwick  says,  "We  must  despair  of 
connecting  them  with  the  authorized  Articles 
of  Religion  by  any  of  the  ordinary  processes 
of  thought."  Frigid  and  cruel  as  arctic  cold, 
that  Formulary  never  acquired  any  synodical 
or  other  authority  in  the  English  Church.  But 
it  remains  an  instructive  witness  to  that  itch 
for  definition  which,  even  more  than  the  itch 
of  disputation  is  the  veritable  Scabies  Eccle- 
sice.1  While,  however,  this  system,  as  a  sys- 
tem, was  rejected,  we  must  not  forget  the 
moderation  that  was  shewn  in  dealing  with 
the  great  underlying  truths  which  it  attempted 
to  deal  with  metaphysically ;  the  truths  of 
God's  Sovereignty  in  grace  on  the  one  side, 
and  man's  free-will  on  the  other.  "  The  Eru- 
dition" of  1543  sums  up  the  matter  in  words 

1  "Pruritus  disputandi" — said  Sir  Henry  Wotton— .Stefov 
Ecclesia. 


214  The  English  Reformation. 

of  golden  wisdom  which  do  not  seem  to  have 
been  forgotten:  "  All  men  be  also  to  be  mon- 
ished,  and  chiefly  preachers,  that  in  this  high 
matter,  they,  looking  on  both  sides,  so  at- 
temper and  moderate  themselves,  that  neither 
they  so  preach  'the  grace  of  God  that  they 
take  away  free-will,  nor,  on  the  other  side, 
so  extol  free-will  that  injury  be  done  to  the 
grace  of  God."  *  Chrysostom  or  Augustine 
need  have  asked  no  more  than  this. 

Let  me  now  call  attention  to  an  instance 
which  shows  that  this  moderation,  of  which 
I  have  been  speaking,  was  in  no  way  incom- 
patible with  the  clearest  assertion  of  a  truth 
which  was  believed  to  have  been  invaded  in 
a  way  that  had  disturbed  what  we  may  call 
the  balance  of  doctrine.  In  the  years  1550  and 
1551  there  was  a  controversy  between  Arch- 
bishop Cranmer  and  Gardiner,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester, touching  the  Holy  Eucharist.  In  the 

2  The  style  of  "  The  Institution  "  has  often  been  remarked  upon. 
Froude  says:  "  In  point  of  language  it  was  beyond  question  the 
most  beautiful  composition  which  had  yet  appeared  in  English 
prose."  "History,"  vol.  iii.  p.  229,  Am.  Ed. 


The  English  Reformation.  215 

. i 

course  of  it  Cranmer  continually  accuses  his 
adversary  of  depraving  the  doctrine  of  Bap- 
tism and  lowering  the  grace  conveyed  by  it. 
No  one  can  read  Cranmer's  final  answer  to 
Gardiner  without  seeing  how  he  constantly 
recurs  to  and  presses  this  charge.  "This  your 
saying  is  jno  small  derogation  to  Baptism; 
....  You  diminish  here  the  effect  of  Bap- 
tism; ....  blasphemous  words  against  the 
Sacrament  of  Baptism;"  in  such  expressions 
Cranmer  reiterates  his  accusation  that  the 
primitive  doctrine  of  Baptism  had  been  de- 
praved and  derogated  from  in  the  interests  of 
transubstantiation. 

Turn  now  to  the  Baptismal  Office  of  1552, 
and  fix  your  eye  on  the  exhortation  and 
thanksgiving  that  immediately  follow  the  bap- 
tismal act.  They  appear  then  for  the  first 
time.  You  will  not  find  them  in  the  Book  of 
1549.  And,  I  doubt  not,  they  were  inserted 
because  of  that  "diminishing  of  the  effect  of 
Baptism "  to  which  the  advocates  of  transub- 
stantiation have  ever  been  prone,  and  as  a 
protest  against  the  exaltation  of  one  sacrament 


216  The  English  Reformation. 

at  the  expense  of  the  other.  Strange  that  in 
our  day  words  so  inserted,  and  with  such  ob- 
vious purpose,  should  have  been  condemned  as 
essentially  and  hopelessly  Romish  ! 3 

I  find  my  final  illustration  of  the  character- 
istic of  our  Reformation  in  its  treatment  of 
questions  connected  with  the  other  sacrament, 
the  Holy  Eucharist.4  The  moment  we  ap- 

3  One  of  the  earliest  instances  of  the  confusion  of  regeneration 
with  conversion  is  found  in  the  Council  of  Trent !     In  the  Decree 
concerning  Original  Sin — passed  at  the  fifth  Session  in  1546 — it  is 
said:   "This  concupiscence,  which  the  Apostle   sometimes  calls 
sin,  the  holy  synod  declares  that  the  Catholic  Church  has  never 
understood  to  be  called  sin,  as  being  truly  and  properly  sin  in 
those  born  again"  etc.     In  the  debates  preceding  the  decree,  Ber- 
tano  asserted  that  the  words  born  again  were  used  purposely  in- 
stead of  baptized,  because  a  person   might  be  baptized  without 
being  really  born  again.     Pallavicini,  "History,"  etc.  book  vii., 
c.  ix.;  compare  Jarvis,  "Answer  to  Milner."     The  Socinian  For- 
mulary, known  as  the  Racovian  Catechism  (published  in  1609), 
asserts  that  "  regeneration  is  nothing  but  the  transformation  of  our 
mind  and  will  and  composure  of  them  to  the  doctrine  of  our  Sa- 
viour Christ,  as  the  very  word  doth  intimate."    J.  J.  Blunt,  "  Right 
Use  of  the  Early  Fathers,"  p.  427. 

4  To  those  familiar  with  the  work  it  is  needless  to  mention  my 
indebtedness,  in  what  follows,  to  Archdeacon  Freeman's  "Princi- 
ples of  Divine  Service,"  vol.  ii.  part  i. 


The  English   Reformation.  217 

proach  that  great  mystery  of  our  religion, 
we  find  ourselves  in  the  presence  of  two 
truths,  about  which  for  eight  centuries  at 
least — probably  for  a  longer  period — there 
was  almost  no  controversy  in  the  Church. 
The  one  truth  is  that  the  Bread  as  blessed 
broken  and  taken  is,  in  some  way,  the 
Body  of  the  Lord  broken, — and  the  Wine, 
over  which  thanks  were  given,  is,  in  some 
way  the  Blood  of  the  Lord  shed, — in  sacri- 
fice. The  other  truth  is  that  the  Bread  and 
Wine  remain  in  their  own  proper  nature  as 
Bread  and  Wine. 

Now  this  assertion  of  two  truths  to  be  held 
together,  and  possibly  without  the  power  of 
solving  the  mystery  of  their  connection,  is 
not  something  which  is  peculiar  to  the  Eu- 
charist. To  say  nothing  of  instances  that 
might  be  adduced  from  the  laws  and  phe- 
nomena of  our  own  physical  and  spiritual 
being,  we  find  two  —  to  name  no  more — • 
which  are  precisely  parallel  in  revelation. 
We  find  asserted,  on  the  one  side,  the  Unity 
of  the  Godhead  in  its  essence,  and,  on  the 


218  The  English   Reformation. 

other,  the  Trinity  of  Persons.  And  again, 
we  find  asserted,  on  the  one  side,  the  sov- 
ereignty of  God  in  grace  as  well  as  nature, 
and,  on  the  other,  the  free-will  of  man.  The 
parallelism  of  these  instances  with  that  of 
the  Eucharist  is  apparent  from  their  state- 
ment. 

Now,  under  these  circumstances,  three  courses 
of  procedure  are  open  to  us.  We  may  content 
ourselves  with  simply  holding  both  truths  with- 
out attempting  to  reconcile,  or  bring  them  into 
one,  by  any  processes  of  human  reasoning;  and 
then  we  follow  the  implied  counsel  of  the  He- 
brew lawgiver,  "The  secret  things  belong  unto 
the  Lord  our  God,  but  those  things  which  are 
revealed  belong  unto  us."5  We  may  drop  one 
of  the  two  truths  and  retain  the  other;  so 
Tritheism  did  when  it  dropped  the  truth  of 
the  Oneness  of  the  Divine  Nature,  and  so 
Sabellianism  did,  when  it  dropped  the  truth 
of  the  Tripersonality.  Or,  lastly,  we  may  set 
ourselves  about  the  task,  beyond  the  power 
of  human  reason,  of  constructing  a  theory 
5  Deut.  xxix.  29. 


The  English   Reformation,  219 

that  shall  reconcile  to  our  understandings  the 
two  truths  which  we  have  not  been  bidden 
to  reconcile  but  only  to  hold;  so  Calvinism 
set  itself  to  reconcile,  by  metaphysical  pro- 
cesses, God's  sovereignty  and  man's  free-will, 
and  ended  by  practically  denying  the  latter. 
The  same  attempted  reconciliation  of  two  co- 
existent truths  has  been  the  originating  cause 
of  almost  all  the  controversies  about  the  Eu- 
charist; which  have  largely  ended,  as  all  such 
controversies  are  likely  to  end,  in  the  denial 
of  one  truth  or  the  other;  in  the  "grosser 
forms  or  subtler  refinements  of  the  Papal 
solution"  on  the  one  hand,  or  the  "  cold 
naturalism  of  the  Zwinglian  theory"  on  the 
other.6 

We  must  not,  however,  forget  that  while 
neither  of  the  two  truths  thus  revealed  can  de- 
stroy the  other,  "each  does,  nevertheless,  of 
necessity  affect,  in  a  negative  way,  the  manner 
in  which  the  other  exists  or  has  place."  The 
Unity  of  the  Godhead  holds  back,  so  to  speak, 

6  See  Bishop  Wilberforce's  "Charge,"  in  1854,  p.  55;  "Words 
of  Counsel,"  xvii. 


220  The  English  Reformation'. 

the  Tripersonality  from  becoming  Tritheism. 
The  Trinity  of  persons  holds  back  the  Unity 
of  the  Godhead  from  becoming  a  denial  of 
the  Tripersonality.  The  grace  of  God — to  re- 
cur to  the  other  instance  cited — must  not  take 
away  the  free-will  of  man,  nor  the  free-will 
of  man  do  injury  to  the  grace  of  God.  In 
other  words  two  such  truths,  and  therefore 
the  two  touching  the  Eucharist,  must  be 
held  in  balance. 

Now,  this  balance  was  just  what  the  cen- 
turies-long controversy  concerning  the  Eu- 
charist had  disturbed,  by  the  attempt  to  ex- 
plain and  define  to  the  satisfaction  of  human 
reason  what  God's  Word  had  not  explained, 
and  the  early  Church  had  not  defined.  What- 
ever result  was  reached  by  this  attempt,  the 
process  was  essentially  a  rationalistic  one. 
The  speculations  which  end  in  transubstan- 
tiation  are  just  as  rationalistic  in  their  char- 
acter as  those  which  issue  in  the  Zwinglian 
theory.  And  the  wisest  and  truest  Reforma- 
tion is  to  put  things  back  to  where  they  were 
before  those  disastrous  speculative  processes 


The  English   Reformation.  221 

had  begun.  And  this,  I  contend,  was  what 
our  Reformation  did,  not  all  at  once  but  by 
"just  degrees."7  That  the  balance  shook  and 
trembled  somewhat  before  it  settled  is  not 
wonderful,  nor  is  it  to  the  purpose.  Nor  are 
we  specially  concerned  with  the  varying  opin- 
ions of  individuals.  The  result  is  what  we  ask 
for.  Not  many  words  will  be  needed  in  stat- 
ing it. 

I  turn  first  to  the  words  used  in  the  delivery, 
of  the  elements.  We  find  in  the  Prayer  Book 
of  1549,  the  first  half  only  of  our  present  form- 
ula. This  embodies  the  first  of  the  two  truths 
above  named  and  might — not  fairly — be  con- 
sidered as  excluding  the  second.  We  find, 
again,  in  the  Book  of  1552,  the  last  half  only 
of  our  present  formula,  embodying  the  second 
truth,  by  making  the  "reception  of  the  Body 
and  Blood  of  Christ,  not  ordinary  and  physical 
but  spiritual  and  heavenly."  And  this  might 

7  "It  was  the  speech  of  a  wise  Bishop,  concerning  too  sudden 
a  convert,  *  I  do  not  well  like  a  man  that  tells  me  so  presently  he 
hath  changed  a  whole  religion  at  once.'"  Puller,  "Moderation  of 
the  Church  of  England,"  p.  274. 


222  The  English   Reformation. 

be  regarded— not  fairly  again — as  excluding  the 
first  truth.  But  in  the  Book  of  1559,  we  find 
both  formulas  combined — as  we  have  them  now, 
and  so  the  two  truths  are  brought  together. 
Men  may  call  this  a  compromise  if  they  will: 
as,  indeed,  those  who  plant  themselves  within 
the  narrow  limits  of  mere  partisanship  will  be 
sure  to  do.  Those,  however,  who  will  not  be 
content  to  echo,  the  words  of  some  single 
master,  and  can  rise  to  the  higher  wisdom 
of  a  wise  humility  will  see  more  than  a  mere 
compromise;  will  see  the  determination  to  bring 
two  settled  truths  together  in  a  balanced  un- 
ion, and  a  refusal  to  divorce  them  in  separated 
assertions.  In  precise  accordance  with  this 
settlement,  this  restoration  of  a  disturbed  bal- 
ance, are  the  words  of  the  XXVIIIth  Article 
of  Religion;  which  against  the  rationalism  of 
Transubstantiation — condemned  also  in  terms 
— assert  that  "the  Body  of  Christ  is  given, 
taken  and  eaten,  in  the  Supper,  only  after  an 
heavenly  and  spiritual  manner; "  and  against 
the  rationalism  of  Zwinglianism  declare,  "  that 
to  such  as  rightly,  worthily,  and  with  faith,  re- 


The  English  Reformation.  223 

ceive.  .  .  the  Bread  which  we  break  is  a  partak- 
ing of  the  Body  of  Christ,  and  likewise  the  Cup 
of  Blessing  is  a  partaking  of  the  Blood  of 
Christ."  Thus  the  two  truths  are  asserted, 
and  left  where  they  were  left  by  the  early 
and  undivided  Church. 

I  claim,  therefore,  for  our  English  Reforma- 
tion what  the  great  Bramhall  claimed;  the 
three  conditions  of  "just  grounds,  sufficient 
authority,  due  moderation."  No  human  work 
indeed  is  perfect.  But  the  results  of  that 
work  have  stood  the  test  of  time,  and  are, 
in  their  old  age,  bringing  forth  more  and 
nobler  fruits  for  <rod  and  man. 

As  I  come  to  the  close  of  these  lectures,  I 
desire  to  repeat  what  I  said  at  the  beginning. 
It  has  not  been  my  plan,  nor  would  it  have 
been  in  my  power,  to  do  more  than  select 
from  the  mass  of  topics  which  the  English 
Reformation  offers  for  study,  those  which  bring 
to  view  the  great  principles  acted  on,  the 
methods  adopted,  the  agents  employed,  and 
the  dangers  incurred;  to  clear  away  some  mis- 
leading side  issues  and  irrelevancies;  and  to 


224  The  English  Reformation. 

correct  some  popular  but  unfounded  misap- 
prehensions and  misrepresentations.  This  was 
all  that  was  hoped  for;  it  is  more,  perhaps, 
than  has  been  accomplished. 

And  now  as  I  look  back  on  that  eventful 
period,  and  forward  from  that  period  to  the 
present,  I  stand  in  reverent  awe  and  thankful 
adoration  before  the  vision  of  the  overruling 
and  protecting  hand  of  God,  and  recognize 
His  seal  upon  the  work,  His  living  power  in 
its  outcomes.  I  see  our  favored  Church  pre- 
served from  becoming  a  sect  bearing  the  im- 
press and  the  name  of  any  single  leader.  I 
see  it  doing  its  work  on  principles  that,  with 
whatever  failure  in  individuals  or  single  acts, 
have  stood  the  tests  of  time.  I  see  it  checked 
when  a  check  was  needed,  and  the  check  re- 
moved when  it  would  have  worked  to  evil.  I 
see  it  saved  from  the  grasping  tyranny  of  Hen- 
ry even  while  it  was  freed  from  a  foreign  usur- 
pation; held  back  from  the  danger  of  un- 
settling foundations  under  his  successor,  by 
the  accession  of  Mary;  drinking  under  her  the 
cup  of  trial  and  suffering;  baptized  with  the 


The  English  Reformation.  225 

baptism  of  fire  and  blood;  driven  to  foreign 
lands  or  crushed  at  home;  with  the  papacy 
and  all  which  that  word  implies  imposed  upon 
it,  and  all  the  previous  work,  to  human  seem- 
ing, utterly  undone. 

Then,  looking  on,  I  see  it  restored  under 
Elizabeth  with  its  voice  of  witness  and  of  wor- 
ship heard  in  the  land  again,  and  its  apos- 
tolic line  continued.  I  see  its  exiles  hastening 
home,  too  many  bringing  with  them  alien  be- 
liefs and  sympathies,  which  in  coming  time 
will  rend  the  Church  within  and  raise  up 
an  unresting  enemy  without.  I  see  all  the 
strength  of  the  papacy,  and  all  the  power  of 
the  mightiest  realm  in  Europe  hurled  against 
it  in  the  great  Armada,  which  the  Lord  scat- 
tered with  the  breath  of  His  mouth.  Looking 
still  onward  into  another  century,  I  see  that 
other  foe  striving  for  the  destruction  of  our 
Church,  and  apparently  accomplishing  its  pur- 
pose. I  see  its  altars  overthrown,  its  churches 
despoiled,  its  clergy  scattered,  its  services 
silenced  till  they  are  audible  nowhere  in  the 
face  of  day,  save  in  the  chapel  of  the  wander- 


226  The  English  Reformation. 

ing  Charles's  ambassador  in  Paris.8  Still  look- 
ing on,  I  see  it  restored  to  its  old  homes  and 
ancient  honors  to  the  reversal  of  all  human  ex- 
pectations. I  see  it,  in  still  later  days,  no 
longer  in  danger  from  without,  but  tried  with 
the  greater  dangers  of  coldness,  apathy,  world- 
liness,  and  time  serving  from  within.  And 
then  I  see  it  as  it  is  to-day,  rising  to  a  nobler, 
fuller  life,  stretching  out  from  its  isolation  in 
"  Britain  severed  from  the  world  "  to  every  con- 
tinent and  the  islands  of  the  sea;  speaking  a 
language  that  seems  likely  to  be  to  the  world 
in  coming  days  what  the  Greek  was  at  the 
Lord's  first  coming,  and  yet  giving  to  the  na- 
tions where  it  goes  God's  Word  and  worship 
in  their  own  several  tongues;  carrying  every  - 

8  Evelyn's  "Diary,"  vol.  i.  p.  337  (Colburn,  1854).  He  says, 
"In  various  controversies  both  with  papists  and  sectarians,  our 
divines  used  to  argue  for  the  visibility  of  the  Church  from  his  [Sir 
Thomas  Browne's]  chapel  and  congregation."  Still  he  did  not 
lose  heart.  And  later  on,  in  1685,  when  things  looked  dark 
Romeward,  he  wrote,  "I  am  most  confident  that  the  doctrine  of 
the  Church  of  England  will  never  be  extinguished,  but  remain 
visible,  if  not  eminent ',  to  the  consummation  of  the  world,"  vol. 
ii.  p.  239. 


The  English  Reformation.  227 

where  the  Apostles'  doctrine  and  fellowship; 
the  breaking  of  bread  and  the  prayers.  Is  it 
not  God's  doing  all  this  ?  Could  man  alone 
ever  have  accomplished  it  ?  Do  not  the  pulses 
throb  and  the  heart  swell  at  all  these  tokens 
of  God's  immediate  presence  ?  Are  not  cow- 
ardice, distrust,  despondency,  rebuked  ?  Are 
we  not  forced  to  say,  whatever  may  be  our 
anxieties  and  forebodings  concerning  present 
troubles, 

"  Therefore  will  we  not  fear,  though  the 
earth  be  moved,  and  though  the  hills  be  car- 
ried into  the  midst  of  the  sea; 

"  Though  the  waters  thereof  rage  and  swell, 
and  though  the  mountains  shake  at  the  temp- 
est of  the  same. 

"  The  rivers  of  the  flood  thereof  shall  make 
glad  the  city  of  God;  the  holy  place  of  the 
tabernacle  of  the  Most  Highest. 

"  God  is  in  the  midst  of  her,  therefore  shall 
she  not  be  removed;  God  shall  help  her,  and 
that  right  early." 


14  DAY  USE 

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